How this page is sorted
Feature grids make these apps look interchangeable. Two questions separate them faster: what do you pay, and in what unit — nothing, once, every week or month, or the cost of running your own server — and where does the work happen: on the phone, in a company’s cloud, or on a machine you manage. Each list below is grouped by the first question and states the second for every app.
Queryable is in both lists, labelled “our app”. It is placed inside its price group like everything else, not at the top, and the structured data on this page lists only the other apps.
Apps that search your iPhone photos by description
Grouped by what you pay, then by where the search runs. Every price and processing claim links to the page it was read from.
Free
-
Anyone with an Apple Intelligence iPhone, and anyone searching by people, places, dates or the text in a photo.
- Price
- Free, built into iOS; description search needs Apple Intelligence.
- Processing
- On-device ML for scene classification and people/pets; Enhanced Visual Search matches places against an Apple server index (privacy-protected, can be switched off). Apple does not publish where Apple Intelligence description search runs.
-
People who want a free, open-source gallery with on-device search and faces, with encrypted backup as an option.
- Price
- Free, with no account in gallery mode; storage plans from $2.49/month on ente.com.
- Processing
- On the device. Indexes are stored locally and, for signed-in users, encrypted and synced to Ente's server. Gallery mode keeps everything on the phone.
Paid once
- Queryable our app
Any iPhone or iPad on iOS 18.0 without Apple Intelligence, people who search with a sample photo, and anyone who wants similar-photo cleanup in the same app. No OCR, no faces.
- Price
- $4.99 once; no subscription, no in-app purchases.
- Processing
- On the device (Apple MobileCLIP-S2 through Core ML); no network request of its own.
-
English-only searching, with search by image and similar images; the same price model as Queryable.
- Price
- $4.99 once; no in-app purchases.
- Processing
- On the device; the vendor says nothing is uploaded.
-
Searching the text in photos, speech in videos and faces — the things Queryable does not do — rather than scene descriptions.
- Price
- Free; Memoria Plus $8.99, one-time by the vendor’s description.
- Processing
- On the device.
Subscription, storage plan or lifetime unlock
-
People who already back up to Google and want people, text and conversational search across devices.
- Price
- Free app with 15 GB shared Google storage; US iOS storage plans from $1.99 (billing period not stated on the listing).
- Processing
- Searches backed-up photos only; Google does not state that search runs on the device.
-
On-device description and text-in-photo search in one app; released October 2026, no ratings yet.
- Price
- Free download; $4.99/month or $39.99 lifetime.
- Processing
- On the device (vendor claim: works in Airplane Mode).
Your own server
-
People who run a home server and want a full self-hosted photo library with CLIP search, OCR and faces.
- Price
- Free AGPL software; optional lifetime product key $25.00 individual or $100.00 per server.
- Processing
- On your own server's machine-learning service; the iOS app is a client.
Similar-photo cleaners without a subscription
Apps whose photo cleanup can be used without a recurring plan, grouped by what you pay.
Free
-
Merging exact duplicates with no extra app; it does not group near-duplicates or similar scenes.
- Price
- Free, built into iOS.
- Processing
- Built into Photos; Apple publishes no near-duplicate grouping.
-
Free cleanup of duplicates, similar shots, large videos and screenshots within daily limits, no ads.
- Price
- Free within daily limits; optional $6.99/week or $39.99 lifetime.
- Processing
- On the device (vendor claim).
-
Picking the best of a series of similar shots side by side; needs iOS 26.
- Price
- Free, “no subscriptions or limits”.
- Processing
- Not stated.
-
Exact and near-duplicate removal that keeps one copy per group automatically.
- Price
- Free; no in-app purchases listed.
- Processing
- Not stated.
Paid once
- Queryable our app
Look-alike still photos sorted into three tiers with a keeper suggested, in the same app as photo search. Stills only; not a storage-cleaner suite.
- Price
- $4.99 once; no subscription, no in-app purchases.
- Processing
- On the device (Apple MobileCLIP-S2 through Core ML); no network request of its own.
-
Exact and similar duplicates with an adjustable matching level.
- Price
- $7.99 once; no in-app purchases.
- Processing
- Not stated.
Subscription cleaners and web image search
Subscription cleaners. The best-known cleaners — Cleanup: Phone Storage Cleaner, Cleaner Kit - Clean Up Storage, Swipewipe: Photo Cleaner, CleanMy®Phone: Cleanup Storage and others — sell weekly, monthly or yearly plans; across the 12 we checked, weekly prices run from $1.99 to $11.99 as of October 2026. They clean far more than photos. Cleanup compared with a paid-once cleaner →
Web reverse-image search is a different job. Apps such as Reverse Image Search & AI Lens, Reversee: Reverse Image Search and Photo Sherlock search by image send a picture to web search engines to find where it appears online; they do not search your own library. To find a photo you already have, from a sample photo, see reverse image search inside your own iPhone library.
Side-by-side comparisons
Each comparison opens with where the other app wins, then sets out a sourced table, row by row.
Methodology
Every price and processing statement above was read on 30 October 2026 from the app’s own US App Store listing or its vendor’s site, and each entry links to the page it came from. App Store in-app purchase lists show a name and a price; where they do not state a billing period, neither does this page. Where a vendor does not say where its processing happens, the entry says “Not stated”. Queryable is version 2.1.6 on the US App Store.
What was tested: nothing. No app here was installed and measured for search quality, accuracy or speed, so the lists make no claim about which finds photos best. Apps were included if their own listing or documentation describes natural-language photo search (first list) or similar-photo cleanup usable without a recurring plan (second list); new apps with no ratings are labelled as such. Queryable publishes this page: read it as our survey, checked against each vendor’s pages, not as a neutral review. Corrections are welcome through the project’s GitHub repository.
Our verdict
Said plainly, by the people who make one of the apps on this page. If your iPhone runs Apple Intelligence and you mostly search for people, places, dates or the text in a screenshot, Apple Photos is enough and you should not buy anything. If you want free, open-source, on-device search with faces and optional encrypted backup, Ente Photos is the strongest free choice — it is as private and as open as Queryable, and costs nothing. Choose Queryable if your device runs iOS 18.0 without Apple Intelligence, if you want to search with a sample photo, or if you want similar photos sorted into three tiers for $4.99 once instead of a weekly cleaner plan — and accept that it reads no text in photos, recognises no faces and cleans stills only. If you want the library backed up off the phone, that is Google Photos or, with your own server, Immich.