10 Best Photo Backup Apps for Android and Other Ways

Backing up photos is a simple and complicated process. It’s simple because the photos are not that big and you can save them anywhere. On the other hand, people have thousands (often more) of photos that they need to store somewhere. This presents an interesting and unique problem. Where can you hide thousands of files at the lowest cost while keeping it simple? Well, luckily there are a bunch of options and they’re all pretty good these days. Most of the selection process comes down to preference more than anything else. Here are the best photo backup apps for Android, and we’ll also list some other methods.

Note that Plex would normally be on this list. However, it removed the camera upload feature in June 2021, so we no longer recommend it.

One last thing before we start. It is highly desirable to have multiple backups in case something happens. For example, I personally let my phone save every photo I take to a microSD card, and then I also back it up using Amazon Photos (I’m a Prime subscriber). So if Amazon goes down, I still have my SD card, and if my SD card dies, I still have Amazon. I recommend doing something similar if you can, just in case.

Photos by Amazon

Price: Free

Amazon Photos is a surprisingly decent photo backup option. It works well, has some good setting options, and can sort your photos somewhat automatically. I personally prefer to set it to only load while charging, so you can do it when you go to bed at night. Amazon Prime members get unlimited free full-resolution backup as part of their Prime subscription. It should definitely be on the shortlist for existing Prime subscribers. You can also set it to not load videos so that larger videos don’t take up your storage space.

Dropbox

Price: Free / In-App Purchases ($9.99 – $216.00 per item)

Dropbox is a big name in photo backup apps and is one of the most trusted. The app has an automatic photo backup tool if you want to use it. Additionally, you can store other files there if you wish. Dropbox supports more than 175 different file types and has cross-platform support for easy access on other platforms. You can also organize things into folders if you want. It’s not as cheap as some others, but it definitely gives you bang for your buck.

Google Photos

Price: Free

Google Photos is no longer an easy recommendation since the free version disappeared in June 2021. However, the prices are in line with the competition and the features are excellent. So it’s still an excellent choice. The features are also excellent. Google Photos tags and sorts your photos using its machine learning capabilities. You can also set it to back up over WiFi only, so it doesn’t use up your mobile data. There’s a ton of tools here, and it’s still very much worth the price. Plus, 15GB of free storage is nothing to dump all your photos on if you don’t take a ton of pictures.

MEGA

Price: Free/In-App Purchases ($5.30 – $320.00 per item)

MEGA rose from the ashes of the great Megaupload controversy in 2012. It’s actually a very good storage service. It’s priced in line with the competition, and you can get up to 16TB of storage, more than most. The app has an autoloader for your camera, which is always good. There’s also end-to-end encryption, which is also always appreciated. MEGA gives you 50GB when you sign up for a new account, though we’ve seen mixed reports on whether you get to keep all that storage or if some of it is just a bonus. Either way, this is as good an option as any, and the encryption makes it a good choice for privacy lovers.

Microsoft OneDrive

Price: Free/In-App Purchases ($0.99 – $99.99 per item)

Microsoft OneDrive is another decent app for backing up photos. It’s more useful as an all-in-one tool since you can store a bunch of different files. It also comes with an office suite if you get the premium versions. However, even as just a photo uploader, it’s still pretty good. It syncs your photos and that’s basically it. Our only advice is to make sure you turn off sync if you intend to delete photos on your device, as many people haven’t and lost a lot of photos because of it. Apart from that little glitch (which we hope Microsoft will fix sooner or later), it’s pretty good, especially if you also need office tools.

Nextcloud is one of the few decent self-hosted photo backup apps. Basically, instead of relying on another company’s cloud storage, you host your own server on your computer and back up your photos that way. The advantage is that you know exactly where your files are and you avoid monthly costs. When I tried these options, I actually used an external hard drive so I could disconnect and take my photos with me wherever I went. Nextcloud is relatively decent (but not without bugs) and completely free for personal use. Your storage limits are regardless of your hard drive space, and you can expand it with external storage if you want.

Resilio Sync is very similar to Nextcloud. It’s a self-hosted server application that works much the same way. You host the server on your computer, and your photos are backed up to your own computer instead of to a cloud server. The free version has some limitations, but you should still be able to back up your entire camera roll with it. Premium versions add some extra features. Unfortunately, the premium versions are quite expensive, but at least they are one-off prices and not subscriptions. Either way, it’s a solid option in the self-hosted space and competes favorably with Nextcloud. Honestly, you can go with either.

SmugMug isn’t the biggest name on this list, but it’s a household name among many photographers out there. It offers one of the best storage deals, where you pay a subscription and get unlimited storage of full resolution photos. There are more expensive options that add features, but all include a section for unlimited storage. The downside is that SmugMug only works with photos, so don’t expect to back up your music collection here. Fortunately, the app is pretty decent. It includes an auto-upload feature, the ability to share your photos, offline browsing, Chromecast support, and the ability to tag your favorite photos for easy reference later. SmugMug also owns Flickr (Google Play link), which offers a very similar unlimited storage option. Honestly, you can choose whichever one you like better because it’s basically the same service.

pCloud

Price: Free/In-App Purchases ($3.99 – $279.00 per item)

pCloud is another app that you can use to back up your pictures and videos. This one offers a generous 10GB of free storage, but can go up to 2TB with subscriptions. This one allows you to access and view files directly from the cloud on all devices. They have client-side encryption, meaning your files will be encrypted before they’re uploaded to pCloud, and a no-knowledge privacy policy, meaning the service provider won’t know what you’re uploading to the cloud.

Your existing NAS or FTP servers

Price: Free

Many people already have storage set up in the form of NAS or FTP. You can usually access them easily using various apps from the Google Play Store. Solid Explorer is linked to the button below. It is easy to use and can connect to FPT, SFTP, SMB and more. It is relatively cheap. This is mostly a manual method, but it works and you have as much storage space as you own on your NAS server.

Try these other photo backup methods

Apps make things a lot easier, but they aren’t the be-all and end-all. Those who don’t mind the extra time or patience can find alternative ways to save their photos. Some don’t even require an internet connection. Some of them are pretty obvious, but we’ll list them anyway for completeness.

• Use an SD card – The number of devices with external storage support is decreasing, but they are still available. I personally use this method. The camera app on my phone asks if I prefer to use external storage or you can usually set that in settings. A large MicroSD card is usually not very expensive, and they are often on sale.
• Transfer to your computer by hand – This usually takes a minute for larger camera photos, but if you connect your phone to your computer, you can easily transfer the entire camera photo to your computer. From there, you can organize and manage your photos as you wish.
• Transfer directly to an external hard drive – Modern Android devices allow you to transfer directly to hard drives. You’ll need a file storage app and a charging cable for this, but it’s otherwise pretty easy to do, and you can store your external hard drives in safe places to avoid damage.
• Upload to Facebook – Facebook has a setting where you can post photos and only you can see them. We certainly wouldn’t recommend this for people with a huge collection of photos, but there doesn’t seem to be a limit to how many photos you can upload to Facebook. After uploading, you can set permissions, sort them into albums, and manage them as you like. We highly recommend using the desktop website for that part.

Of course, if you come across any other methods, tell us about them in the comments and we will try them and add them to this list if they are a good solution.

If we’ve missed any great photo backup apps for Android, let us know about them in the comments. You can also click here to check out our latest lists of Android apps and games.
Thanks for reading.