Ohhi vs Pixelfed
Ohhi is a European alternative to Pixelfed: same content & media use case, headquartered in Netherlands and governed by EU GDPR, while Pixelfed is based in Canada.
By the EU Alternatives team Last updated
Share photos and videos with an invited circle only: chronological timeline, shared albums with roles, no ads, no algorithm, EU servers.
- Jurisdiction
- EU / EEA
- Primary privacy law
- EU GDPR
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- No
- Open source
- No
- Free tier
- Yes
Pixelfed is federated photo sharing on ActivityPub, with chronological feeds, no ads, no tracking, and posts that reach Mastodon followers without a second account. It costs nothing: the code is AGPL, so you either join a community server or self-host. There is no company behind it though, just a Canadian solo maintainer and a US fiscal host, and whoever runs your instance sets the privacy terms you actually get.
- Jurisdiction
- CA
- GDPR by default
- Requires DPA + TIA
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- Possible
Ohhi vs Pixelfed at a glance
| Ohhi | Pixelfed | |
|---|---|---|
| Headquarters | Netherlands | CA |
| Data jurisdiction | EU / EEA | CA law applies |
| Primary privacy law | EU GDPR | Requires DPA + transfer assessment |
| US CLOUD Act exposure | No | Possible |
| Open source | No | — |
| Free tier | Yes | — |
| Best for | Teams that need content & media built for European data-protection requirements | Teams already invested in the Pixelfed ecosystem |
Choose Ohhi if…
- You want a provider governed by a European privacy regime
- GDPR or public-sector data-protection requirements apply to you
- You want to start free and scale up later
- You'd rather back the European tech ecosystem
Stick with Pixelfed if…
- You depend on integrations only available in the Pixelfed ecosystem
- Your organisation has no EU data-residency constraints
- Migration costs outweigh the jurisdiction benefits for now
About Ohhi
Ohhi is a private photo and video network for family and friends, where only the people you invite can see what you share. There are no followers, no public profiles and no recommendation algorithm: the timeline runs in order and shows your own circle, nothing else. Viewing and reacting stays free, so relatives can join without paying anything.
Photos go into folders and albums with per-person roles, from view-only through contributing to managing, and everyone comments and reacts in place. Trip folders lay a holiday out day by day and on a map, and optional face grouping runs on Ohhi's own servers rather than an external AI API.
Key benefits:
- Invite-only circles so no follower, stranger or ranking algorithm reaches your photos
- Albums with roles covering view-only, contributing and managing access per person
- Free to view and react so family can join without taking a subscription
- One plan for six accounts shared across parents, children and grandparents
- Opt-in face grouping processed in Ohhi's own environment, never an external AI API
- Trips on a map built from your own photo coordinates, place names resolved in house
- Native iOS and Android apps uploading straight from the phone, plus a browser library
Ohhi is run from Nijmegen in the Netherlands by Geraedts Holding B.V., under Dutch law and the GDPR. Photos and videos are stored with Hetzner in Germany and Finland, delivered through Bunny CDN in Slovenia and billed through Mollie in Amsterdam. The company commits in writing to no ads, no tracking cookies, no third-party analytics and no AI training on user content.
Paid plans run from €6 to €149 a year. Ohhi deliberately does not rebuild public pages, groups or Marketplace: it replaces the part of Facebook and Instagram most people actually use.
Why choose Ohhi over Pixelfed?
The decisive argument is data jurisdiction. Pixelfed is headquartered in CA, which means personal data processed through it can be subject to non-EU legal regimes: the US CLOUD Act, FISA 702, or similar laws depending on the provider. After the 2020 Schrems II ruling, EU organisations must carry out a transfer impact assessment for every such data flow.
Ohhi removes that overhead. As a Netherlands-based provider, it operates natively under GDPR, and data stays inside the EU/EEA by default. For regulated sectors such as health, public administration, and finance, that's not a nice-to-have but a requirement. For everyone else, it's concentration-risk insurance: you avoid depending on a single non-EU jurisdiction that can change the rules without warning.