Where Google Photos wins
Google Photos is a backup service first and a search engine second, and both halves are good reasons to use it. If your library already lives in Google’s cloud, its search covers everything you have backed up.
- It is free to start: the app costs nothing and every Google Account comes with up to 15 GB shared across Google Photos, Gmail and Drive (as of October 2026).
- It searches in natural, descriptive phrases — Google’s own examples are “colorful sunsets in Mexico” and “drinking tea by the fireplace”.
- It finds text: quotation marks return “exact-text matches in filenames, camera models, captions, or text within photos”.
- It finds people and pets by name once you have labelled them.
- Ask Photos adds conversational Gemini search on mobile, rolling out in selected countries and languages for people who meet Google’s Gemini features in Photos requirements.
- It groups duplicates and similar photos into photo stacks, and it keeps a copy of the library off the phone, which Queryable never does.
Where Queryable adds something
Queryable is for photos you do not want to upload, or have not uploaded yet. It searches the system photo library on the phone and nothing else.
- Nothing leaves the phone: no account, no backup and no network request of its own. Its App Store privacy label is “Data Not Collected”.
- Photos that were never backed up are searchable as soon as they are indexed, with no 3–5 day wait.
- You can search with a sample photo, or open “Similar Photos” from any result. Google does not document search by example image in the help pages read for this page.
- It is paid once: $4.99, with no storage plan to renew.
- Its cleanup sorts look-alikes into three tiers — exact, nearly identical and similar scenes — and pre-selects a keeper.
Compare
Every Google cell is a fact Google publishes — in its Google Photos help pages or its US App Store listing — numbered to its source. Where Google publishes nothing in those pages, the cell says “Not published”.
| Dimension | Google Photos 7.98.0 (iOS) | Queryable 2.1.6 |
|---|---|---|
| Price (as of October 2026) | Free app with up to 15 GB of storage shared across Google Photos, Gmail and Drive. US App Store in-app purchases: 100 GB $1.99, 200 GB $2.99, Google AI Plus (2 TB) $9.99 — the listing does not state their billing period — and 100 GB of Storage (1 year) $19.99. [1] | $4.99 on the US App Store, paid once. No subscription, no in-app purchases, no free tier and no trial. [7] |
| Which photos are searchable | Backed-up photos only. Google: “You can only search for backed-up photos. … It can take a while for photos to be searchable,” and it suggests searching again in 3–5 days. [3] | Photos with a usable copy on the device, once you index them. Indexing runs only while its screen is open; new photos are added when you tap to add them. [8][9] |
| Where processing happens | Google does not state on the help pages read that search runs on the device. Search covers the backed-up library. [3][2] | On the device. Indexing and search run through Core ML and Metal on the phone, the app makes no network request of its own, and it ships no analytics or crash-reporting SDK. [8] |
| Describe a scene in words | Yes. Google’s examples include “colorful sunsets in Mexico” and “drinking tea by the fireplace”. Ask Photos adds conversational search on mobile only, in selected countries and regions, for people who meet the Gemini features in Photos requirements. [2][4] | Yes, on every supported device. A sentence is encoded on the phone by a MobileCLIP-S2 text model into the same 512-dimension space as the photos, and the library is ranked by similarity. [8] |
| Search with an example photo | Not published in the Google Photos pages read for this comparison. [2] | Yes. A camera button in the search bar takes a photo or picks one from the library and uses it as the query, and every photo’s detail view has a “Similar Photos” panel. [8] |
| Text inside photos | Yes. Quotation marks find “exact-text matches in filenames, camera models, captions, or text within photos”. [2] | No. Queryable performs no text recognition of any kind; a screenshot is found by what it looks like, never by the words printed in it. [8] |
| People and pets | Yes, after you label them: “You can only search with a name or nickname if you’ve labeled people or pets.” [2] | No face, people or pet recognition, and no albums, places or map. [8] |
| Duplicates and similar photos | The listing says it organises “duplicates and similar photos into photo stacks”. [1] | Three tiers from one scan — Exact Duplicates, Nearly Identical and Similar Scenes — with an aesthetic score pre-selecting the photo to keep and one system confirmation dialog for the batch. Stills only: videos are never grouped or deleted. [8] |
| Backup and other devices | Backup is the core of the service, and search works on the backed-up library. Google’s help pages also cover a web version, where Ask Photos “isn’t available”. [3][4] | None. Queryable reads the system photo library and never copies photos anywhere. The index lives on one device and is not synced or backed up; two devices means indexing twice. [8] |
| Requirements | iOS 18.0 or later for the iPhone and iPad app (version 7.98.0). [1] | Any iPhone or iPad running iOS 18.0 or later. No Apple Intelligence requirement, no account and no sign-in. [7][8] |
| Data and privacy statements | The US App Store privacy label has “Data Linked to You” and “Data Not Linked to You” sections. Google states “Your personal data in Google Photos is never used for ads” and that Ask Photos queries “may be reviewed by humans” after de-identification. [1][5] | “Data Not Collected.” No analytics or crash-reporting SDK. [7][8] |
| Result quality, accuracy and speed | Not tested. | Not tested. |
Result quality, accuracy and speed: No ranking quality, recall, precision, indexing speed or search latency was measured for this page. A claim of that kind requires the controlled hands-on test in the project’s comparison research protocol, and this page is deliberately published without one.
Which to choose
Choose Google Photos if…
- You want your library backed up and searchable from other devices, including the web.
- You search by people’s names or by the text in photos.
- You would rather pay nothing to start, and you are fine with photos being uploaded to Google.
Choose Queryable if…
- You do not want to upload your photo library or sign in to anything to search it.
- You want photos searchable that never go to a cloud, as soon as they are indexed.
- You want to search with a sample photo or clean up near-duplicates and similar scenes.
- You would rather pay once than keep a storage plan.
What this page does not claim
Google Photos does several things Queryable does not, and they stay on the page.
- Neither app’s result quality was tested.
- Google’s search is not described here as running in any particular place beyond what Google publishes.
- Queryable has no OCR, no face recognition, no backup and no sync, and indexes only while its indexing screen is open.
- US web prices for Google One were not read (the fetch was geolocated outside the US); the prices above are the iOS in-app purchases.
Methodology
Dates and storefront: Google Photos facts were read on 30 October 2026 from four Google Photos Help pages and the US App Store listing for Google Photos 7.98.0 (minimum iOS 18.0). Prices are the US App Store in-app purchases as listed that day; the listing gives storage plans a name and a price but no billing period, so none is stated here. Queryable is version 2.1.6, US App Store, minimum iOS 18.0, price re-read the same day.
What was tested: nothing. This is a facts-only comparison published under the Tier 1 rules of the project’s comparison research protocol: every Google cell is a fact Google publishes, with its source numbered; every Queryable cell describes the shipping app; anything neither side publishes says “Not published”, and result quality is marked “Not tested”. No row states a ranking, accuracy, recall or speed figure. Queryable publishes this page, so read it as our argument checked against Google’s own pages, not as a neutral review. Corrections are welcome through the project’s GitHub repository.
Citations
Every Google Photos statement above was read from the pages below on the date shown. Vendor pages change without notice; if one now says something different, the vendor is right and this page is stale.
- Google Photos: Backup & Edit — US App Store listing (v7.98.0) Price, in-app purchases, version, minimum iOS, privacy label and the photo-stacks sentence.
- Google Photos Help — Search by people, things & places in your photos
- Google Photos Help — Find lost photos & videos (iPhone & iPad)
- Google Photos Help — Use Ask Photos for photos, information & assistance
- Google Photos Help — Gemini features in Photos privacy hub
- Google One — plans page Fetched from a non-US location (page rendered KRW prices). Use the iOS in-app-purchase prices for US figures.
- Queryable on the US App Store Source for the one-time price, the absence of in-app purchases, the minimum iOS version and the “Data Not Collected” privacy label.
- How Queryable works The on-device model, the local index, the search path and the app’s documented limits, taken from the shipping 2.1.6 build.
- Offline AI photo search The iCloud-only boundary and what “offline” does and does not cover during indexing.
Questions about Google Photos and Queryable
Can Google Photos search photos that are not backed up?
Google’s iPhone help says “You can only search for backed-up photos,” and that it can take 3–5 days for photos to become searchable. Queryable works the other way round: it searches the photos in the iPhone’s own library, on the device, once you have indexed them.
Does Queryable upload my photos?
No. Queryable has no account and no server. Indexing and search run on the iPhone through Core ML and Metal, the app makes no network request of its own, and its App Store privacy label is “Data Not Collected”.
Can Queryable read text in photos or find people like Google Photos?
No. Queryable performs no text recognition and no face recognition. Google Photos finds text in photos with quotation marks and finds people and pets once you have labelled them.
How much does each cost?
Google Photos is free to download with up to 15 GB of storage shared across Google services; as of October 2026 its US App Store storage plans start at $1.99 for 100 GB. Queryable is $4.99 once on the US App Store, with no subscription and no in-app purchases.
Can I use both?
Yes. Queryable reads the iPhone’s photo library whether or not Google Photos is also backing it up, so you can keep Google Photos for backup, people and text, and use Queryable for on-device description and sample-photo search.