for travelers, not influencers
A private travel journal for the moments that matter - shared with your circles, not the world. Voice notes from the medina. Sunset photos only your family sees. Capture the trip today, go down memory lane tomorrow.
Free & open source · Self-host or hosted plans · Coming soon
what makes it different
Share moments with trusted groups - family, travel crew, close friends. Each circle is its own private world. Comments and likes are scoped per circle.
Travel together, remember together. Multiple people own a trip, each sharing moments to their own circles. Co-travelers see everything.
Record the sound of that market. Capture the golden hour. Text, photos, video, voice - each moment is multi-modal and GPS-tagged.
See your memories on a map. Clustered pins, trip routes, and a timeline that feels like flipping through a journal, not doomscrolling a feed.
Private journal entries visible only to you. Circle-scoped interactions. Shareable trip links with teaser views. You control every boundary.
Capture moments in airplane mode. Background uploads when you're back online. Compressed media. Your memories don't need WiFi.
simple by design
Snap a photo, record a voice note, or jot a caption. GPS auto-tags the spot. Works offline - uploads when you're back online.
Pick who sees it - family, travel crew, close friends, or just yourself. Different moments can go to different circles.
Swipe your timeline, explore the trip map, or send a shareable link to friends who aren't on the app.
the honest comparison
| Feature | MemoryLane | Google Photos | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No ads | Yes | No | No | Product ad-free |
| Chronological feed (no algorithm) | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| No behavioral tracking | Yes | No | No | No |
| You own your content | Yes | Broad license | Broad license | Limited license |
| Full data export | Yes | Partial | Partial | Yes (Takeout) |
| Open source code | AGPL-3.0 | No | No | No |
| Self-hostable | Yes | No | No | No |
| Private circles by default | Yes | Close Friends only | Custom audiences | Partner sharing |
| Works offline | Yes | No | No | View cache |
| No AI trained on your content | Yes | No (opt-out varies) | No (opt-out varies) | Yes (stated policy) |
Based on publicly documented policies as of 2026.
your memories, your choice
MemoryLane is open source and always will be. Run it yourself on your own servers, or skip the infrastructure and let us take care of storage, backups, and updates.
Try it without hosting anything
Just sign up and start sharing
For households & close-knit groups
Hosted plans are launching soon. No credit card required to start.
MemoryLane is AGPL-3.0. Run the full app on your own server with your own S3 bucket - all features, unlimited users, zero cost. Docker Compose one-liner setup.
open core, open heart
Every feature on this page ships in the AGPL-3.0 codebase. The hosted plans fund development - you're paying for hosting, backups, and convenience, never for locked-away features. Self-hosters get the exact same app.
honest reasons to pay
No PostgreSQL to patch, no S3 buckets to configure, no Docker to monitor. We handle uptime so you handle memories.
Your family doesn't run Kubernetes. With hosted, they just download the app and join your circle in one tap.
Daily encrypted backups with 30-day retention. Your trip to Kyoto isn't one disk failure away from disappearing.
Voice note transcription, image descriptions, trip summaries - powered by AI, running on our infrastructure, never training on your data.
Your subscription directly funds open-source development. No VC money, no ads, no pivot to engagement metrics. Just a sustainable project.
Your data is never held hostage. Full export to open formats at any time. Or migrate to self-hosted - same codebase, seamless transition.
questions, honestly answered
Yes, MemoryLane is completely free to self-host under the AGPL-3.0 license. The full source includes every feature on this page. Run it on your own server, connect your own S3 bucket, pay nothing. Hosted plans exist only for people who don't want to run infrastructure.
Free is a hosted plan to try MemoryLane without running infrastructure. Personal unlocks AI features, automatic backups, and priority support for $3.99/month. Family covers up to 6 household members with an auto-created shared family circle for $9.99/month. Features are otherwise identical.
Only the circles you explicitly share a moment with can see it. Private journal entries are visible to you alone. Circles are scoped, so likes and comments in one circle never leak to another.
Yes, you can export all your MemoryLane data anytime in open formats. The export covers every photo, voice note, text moment, and trip. You can also migrate from hosted to self-hosted without losing anything - it's the same codebase.
No, MemoryLane never trains AI models on your content. The AI features (voice transcription, image descriptions) run on our infrastructure and only on the specific moment you ask about.
Your memories stay yours. The source is AGPL-3.0, so the app itself can always be self-hosted. For hosted users, we commit to 90 days notice and data-export tooling before any shutdown. Nothing is locked in.
Yes, MemoryLane is a private, open-source alternative to Instagram for sharing travel photos and voice notes with family and friends. Unlike Instagram, there are no ads, no algorithmic feed, no behavioral tracking, and no public follower graph.
WhatsApp and Messenger are fine for individual messages, but they lack trip-level organization, GPS-tagged timelines, shared maps, and collaborative trip journals. MemoryLane keeps travel memories grouped, browsable by trip, and scoped to exactly the people you want - without relying on Meta infrastructure.
Google Photos is great storage but weak for sharing: it has no private-circle concept, no trip collaboration, and no voice notes. MemoryLane adds circle-based sharing, trip-level structure, and open-source self-hosting. You can use both - export from Google Photos via Takeout and import into self-hosted MemoryLane.
The hosted app is coming soon to iOS App Store and Google Play Store. If you self-host, you can also build the Expo app yourself from source and install it via TestFlight or sideloading.
Yes, MemoryLane is offline-first. You can capture photos, voice notes, and text moments in airplane mode; they upload in the background once you're back online. GPS tagging works offline too.
Hosted plans and the public repo are launching soon. Sign up for updates and your memories stay yours.
Launching soon · Stay tuned