The best photo organizer apps are important if you take lots of photos on your phone — which is basically a given nowadays.
The best photo organizer apps give you a safe place to store your photos in the cloud, so you won't lose your memories if your device is lost or broken. However, the key word here is 'organizer' — a decent organizer app must also help you manage your images and make them easy to tag, group and find.
You'll need one of the best photo organizer apps if you ever take photos on your smartphone. And given that almost everyone on the planet takes photos on their phone, there's almost nobody who won't benefit from using one!
As well as simply storing all of those images you snap each day so they're nice and safe should you lose your phone, the best photo organizer apps can also make it a lot easier to find that one shot you took of your best friend's dog on a beach last year, or your niece's birthday party, or that great fancy dress outfit you once wore. That's because many can automatically tag your images via advanced machine learning, so you can find pictures simply by searching for a keyword.
Most also have built-in editing tools and social sharing features, making them a one-stop shop for all your smartphone photography needs.
We've tested each of the options in our list, so you can be sure that whichever of the best photo organizer apps you settle on, it comes highly recommended.
The best photo organizer apps in 2023
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We’ve tested each of the photo organizer apps in our list, to help you make the best choice for you. Read on to see our picks of the best photo organizer apps.
The best photo organizer app for iOS users
Just as Android has Google Photos, iOS has Apple Photos, which has become ever more advances with successive releases of iOS.
There are plenty of photo organizing options, including the ability to order and browse by people and places, or by date, or to create custom albums. The Media Types option is another good one; this groups content into images and videos, but further splits them up to include Portrait Mode, screenshots and so on. There's a lot of AI at work under the surface, too: iOS can identify people, places, animals and even plants, grouping subjects together for you into albums. And it's worth it just for the Memories feature alone, which surfaces images, galleries and videos for specific dates, people or places.
It's all fully integrated with the iOS ecosystem, so sharing in Messages or other apps is seamless and it comes with plenty of editing tools too. As you'd expect, it uses iCloud to actually store your photos in the cloud.
Apple Photos is free to use, but you only get 5GB of iCloud storage, which is also used by your other Apple devices for literally everything else, including device backups. You can purchase an extra 50GB for 99 cents/month, 200GB for $2.99/month, 2TB for $10.99/month, 6TB for $32.99/month and 12TB for $64.99/month. The 200GB and above plans can be shared with other family members.
The best photo organizer app for Android
Google Photos is the stock Android photo manager (although it's also available on iOS) and it has a ton of great features. Google Photos offers 15GB of free storage, which is a whole 10GB more than Apple Photos.
Just as Apple Photos uses iCloud for storage, Google Photos uses Google One, which allows cross-device syncing for your photos (with minimal compression), as well as the option to store original quality photos in your Drive space. The app can be set to automatically back up and sync your photos so that your snaps are always safe, and it displays it all by date.
A smart assistant feature can help you set up albums, collages, grouped photo stories and animated photos. There's even a powerful "visual search" feature that works even on untagged, unlabeled photos; simply search for "cat" or "food" or "beach" or any other term and it'll serve up your relevant shots with uncanny accuracy. It'll also recognize people and group them together, making it easy to find photos of a particular family member or friend.
Google is continually refining the app with updates, so new features are constantly being added, including AI features.
While Google Photos is free, any new photos you add will count against your general Google account's 15GB limit, which includes Gmail, Google Docs, and other Google Cloud services. If you need additional storage, you'll need to sign up to a Google One plan, which start at $1.99/month for 100GB, $9.99/month for 2TB and $19.99/month for 2TB "AI Pro" plan, which include acess to the Gemini and Veo apps, plus other AI features.
The best photo organizer app for Prime members
Previously exclusive to Amazon Prime subscribers, Amazon's cloud photo storage service has since opened up to everyone as Amazon Photos. If you aren't a Prime member, you might want to consider one of the alternatives, as 5GB isn't much storage, free or otherwise.
However, if you are a Prime member, this is the organizer app that makes the most sense, as you get unlimited — yes, unlimited — storage for photos, and 5GB of video storage.
Your photos will be stored at full resolution, too. Making this a great option for photographers shooting on one of the best mirrorless cameras. Modern cameras produce some big image files, so having unlimited storage with no compression is a big win.
The app automatically syncs so your photos can be accessed from any device with a connection (including both iOS and Android devices), and includes a wealth of organizational features and AI-assisted search. Prime Photos also has enhanced family sharing features, allowing you to share your unlimited photo storage with up to five family members and adding a shared Family Vault.
For non Prime members, plans start at $1.99/month for 100GB. However, given a Prime membership costs $14.99, if you'll use the other benefits of Prime, it's worth just signing up to that and getting the unlimited storage plan.
Best photo organizer app for photographers
Flickr is designed to be an all-in-one storage, organization and sharing platform for photographers. Not only can you use the platform to store and back up your images, you can also engage with the photography community for feedback on your photos, and to view other peoples' for inspiration.
Flickr offers a free tier, which includes 1,000 full resolution photos and shows ads. Flickr Pro is better suited to photographers however, as it includes unlimited storage at full resolution, and support for videos at up to 10 minutes in length.
Flickr Pro is ad-free and also includes automatic uploading, as well as smart search features. That means that organization isn't as dependent on users manually tagging each photo. The default Camera Roll groups your photos by date, and social features let you share your photos as well as keep track of images shared by your friends and other users. The Pro tier also includes a dashboard for you to track your photos and stats.
The base tier of Flickr is free but only offers 1,000 photos. Flickr Pro costs $10.44/month, although you can pay annually for a discount, which equates to $6.08/month ($72.96 lump sum). There's also a two-yearly plan which works out at $5.54/month ($132.96 lump sum).
FAQs
We've put together a list of frequently asked questions to help you choose the best photo organizer app for you.
How to choose the best photo organizer app
The major factor here is which platform you use. Cloud storage costs providers money, so you'll never get much for free. That means it's difficult to recommend on price, as beyond free tiers, the pricing isn't that different.
If you use mainly Apple devices, the Apple Photos / iCloud is probably the best way to go, as you'll get seamless integration across all your devices, and can use your iCloud storage for other things, like storing documents and backing up devices. The same is effectively true for Android users with Google Photos.
As we've said above, though, it's worth considering whether you have any specific needs. If you're a photographer, then Flickr Pro might be the best shout, thanks to unlimited photos storage, relatively generous 10-minute video file storage, and the sharing aspects of the Flickr community.
Then there's the curveball: if you're a Prime member already or want to be, Amazon Photos is a no brainer. However, you may still find yourself needing extra iCloud or Google storage anyway for backing up your phone, it's photos and files.
What is the best way to store thousands of photos?
You guessed it: via a photo organization and storage app. Not only can you buy and expand enough cloud storage space to store huge volumes (which gets tricky with physical storage, especially if you have a huge number of images), but you can also rely on the best photo organizer apps to do all the organization for you, using AI and tagging. That means you don't need to dig through thousands of images to find what you're looking for.
As we've covered above, some of the best photo organizer apps also have unlimited storage, so you never need to worry about running out; not to mention the benefits of backing up to the cloud, meaning you won't risk losing your precious memories.
Is there a free way to store photos?
There is. In fact, all of the above entries have free tiers. As we'v already mentioned, though, storage isn't free. Cloud storage works by connecting you to huge buildings full of servers and storage — these cost a lot of money to run, meaning cloud storage is always going to need to be paid for by the end user, above a certain amount.
It really comes down to how much storage you need. If you only have a few photos to store and can get away with the free 5GB or 15GB plans offered by Apple, Google and Amazon, do you really need to organize them? 5GB isn't that many photos.
Be sure to check out all of our photography and camera picks:
We have a wide range of buying guides to help you make the right decisions. If you're also looking to edit photos, make sure you check out our photography guides, including the best photo editing software, best free photo editing software and best photo editing apps. If you're a videographer, check out our guides on the best video editing software and best video editing apps. If you're not keen on paying for your software just yet, why not read our guide to the best free video editing software. Only need to store images? You might also be interested in our guide to the best cloud storage for photos. And if you want to upgrade your gear, make sure you read our round up of the best cameras you can buy today, as well as our guides to the best DSLR cameras, best mirrorless cameras, best point-and-shoot cameras and best instant cameras.
Smartphone shooters might also want to read our guides to the best iPhone lenses, best iPhone tripods, best ring lights and best ring lights for phones.
