Immich is a self-hosted photo and video app - timeline, face recognition, semantic search, map, mobile auto-backup. Cotton is a general-purpose encrypted file cloud for every file type. Different categories. This is not a scoreboard with fake certainty; it is a product-fit comparison for self-hosted file cloud decisions.
Immich is purpose-built for photos and video - and it rejects most other file types on upload. If your problem is a private home for all your files - documents, 3D, audio, archives, photos - Immich literally will not ingest most of them, and Cotton is the fit. If your problem is replacing Google Photos, Immich is built for exactly that.
Cotton encrypts at rest by default with streaming AES-GCM and offers client-side E2E folders. Immich stores originals in cleartext on disk - at-rest encryption was formally closed as not planned, and there is no end-to-end encryption; the suggested mitigation is OS-level full-disk encryption you set up yourself. It is also built around local filesystem storage, with no native S3 or object-storage backend.
Cotton ships passkeys and TOTP natively and runs as one image plus Postgres. Immich keeps auth minimal - OIDC only, with no native 2FA, delegated to an external identity provider - and runs as a multi-container stack including a machine-learning service that wants roughly 6 to 8 GB of RAM.
Pick Immich for a polished, AI-powered photo library with mobile auto-backup - it is excellent, and Cotton does not try to be that. Pick Cotton when you want one encrypted home for every file type, with previews, sharing, and recovery across all of them.
Cotton does not need to beat every long-established ecosystem on every surface. The useful comparison is narrower: storage behavior, privacy posture, recovery model, deployment shape, and product focus.
Cotton stores file content as chunks and manifests, so deduplication, verification, versions, snapshots, and cleanup share one mental model.
Compression and AES-GCM encryption sit in the normal storage path; the site does not sell isolated crypto speed as user-visible ingest speed.
Snapshots, versions, trash, and reclaim are positioned as ordinary file-cloud workflows, not emergency-only backend chores.
Cotton deliberately stays narrower than broad collaboration suites: files, previews, sharing, WebDAV, recovery, and operator visibility.
Cotton is the cleaner story when files, previews, shares, snapshots, versions, WebDAV, passkeys, admin diagnostics, and a compact Docker/Postgres deployment are the main problem.
People replacing Google Photos who want an AI-powered photo library with mobile backup.
You want a focused self-hosted file cloud with content-addressed storage, streaming crypto, snapshots, previews, WebDAV, sharing, passkeys, and a compact Docker deployment.
You need a best-in-class photo and video library: face recognition, semantic search, map, and mobile auto-backup more than the Cotton storage-engine and recovery-model strengths.
Cotton is not trying to be a bigger suite than Immich. It is trying to be the sharper file cloud when the file engine itself is the product decision.
If you need one encrypted home for every file type (not just photos), Cotton is the fit.
Last reviewed June 2026. Every line below links to its receipt - the actual issue, doc, or commit it came from. Competitors move fast; if a link goes stale, open an issue and we fix it.
Receipts
Not always. Cotton is a focused file cloud, not a clone of every app and integration in the older ecosystems. It fits best when file storage, previews, sharing, snapshots, WebDAV, security, and deployment simplicity are the main problem.
Because people searching for a self-hosted file cloud often start with the familiar names. The comparison makes the tradeoff explicit instead of pretending every product has the same goal.
If the job is a photo and video library - face recognition, semantic search, a map, shared albums, mobile auto-backup - Immich is best-in-class and Cotton does not try to be that. Cotton is the better fit when you need one encrypted home for every file type.