Methodology
How we check
Fifteen criteria, one rule for evidence, and the reasons an app can or can't be ranked first.
The evidence rule
Only what an app says about itself counts. For each cell in the tables we quote the app’s own pricing page, help centre article, privacy policy, security page or App Store privacy label, with the URL and the date we read it. We do not use reviews, news articles, other comparison sites, or our own testing as evidence. If an app makes no statement about a criterion, the cell says not stated — we never fill the gap with a guess, and “not stated” is not a mark against the app.
The App Store privacy labels deserve a note: they are written by the developer, published by Apple in a fixed format, and are the only place most of these companies state, in identical vocabulary, what data may be used to track you. We quote the label as published on the date given.
The fifteen criteria
- Price — the free tier (if any), the paid tiers, and what the paid tier buys.
- Do relatives have to pay? — whether one subscription covers the people invited.
- Storage limit — unlimited, metered, or capped, and what happens at the cap.
- Photos kept at full quality? — whether the app stores and returns the original file, or resizes, compresses or reduces it.
- Video limits — length, size or resolution limits, free and paid.
- Ads? — whether the app shows advertising, on which tier, and to whom.
- AI or face recognition run on your photos? — whether the company’s systems analyse the photos (face grouping, tagging, search indexing, shopping suggestions), whether it is on by default, and whether it can be turned off.
- Can the company open your photos? — the encryption question. “In transit and at rest” means the company holds the keys and its systems can read the photos; “end to end” means it cannot. We report what each app says, including disclosed exceptions.
- Can family look without installing an app? — whether a relative can view in a browser or by email.
- Do viewers need an account? — whether looking requires signing up.
- Can family add their own photos? — whether invited relatives can contribute, and under what settings.
- Can you leave with everything? — export or bulk download, and whether what comes back is the original.
- Platforms — iOS, Android, web, desktop, and whether the app is actually available today.
- App Store label: data used to track you — the “Data Used to Track You” section of the iOS privacy label, quoted, plus notable “Data Linked to You” purposes.
- How it makes money — subscriptions, ads, prints, storage, or membership perks.
How the colours work
Each cell carries a mark — Yes, No, Partly — and the colour says whether that is the good answer for the row. Green is good (no ads, no AI, the company can’t open the photos, family can look without an app), red is the other way, amber is partly. Grey rows — price, storage, video limits, platforms, business model — are facts without a good or bad. Every cell has a superscript number linking to the source at the bottom of the page.
How “best” is decided
A “best for…” page weights the criteria for one situation and says which ones it weighted. One fixed rule applies to every ranking: Kin Album, which is made by the company that runs this site, is never placed first unless the criteria put it there — and the criteria are published above, so you can check the working. Where it does rank first, the page says so, every table that includes it carries a one-line note of the ownership, and the About page states it in full.
Each app’s page opens with where that app places on every “best for…” page, taken from the page’s own published order — ranked or not, high or low — so no app page hides the rankings that go against it.
The find-your-app tool does the weighting the other way round: you say which phone takes the photos and how much each of thirteen questions matters, and every app — Kin Album included — is scored from the same marks by one rule, printed on the page. The two platform questions are app-only: an app in the App Store or on Google Play for the person posting, with a web app in a browser not counting, since relatives’ browser access has a question of its own. Seven “Start from” chips set the sliders to the weightings the “best for…” pages publish; the default is everything equal.
The “dedicated apps only” switch
Most families already have Google Photos, iCloud Shared Albums, Amazon Photos or WhatsApp, and many arrive here because sharing through them turned out to be fiddly. Those four are compared on every criterion like the rest, because what they cost you — reduced copies, face grouping, shopping scans, an account for Grandma — is the evidence for choosing a dedicated album at all. The “dedicated apps only” filter beside every table, card grid and ranking hides them so the dedicated albums can be compared among themselves. It hides; it never re-scores: every remaining app keeps the same cells and the same find-tool percentage, positions are renumbered in your browser, and the full ranking is what every page shows by default and what search engines and AI readers see. Your choice is kept in your browser only.
What we don’t do
No affiliate links. No referral codes. No sponsored placements. No advertising. No fonts, images or code loaded from anyone else’s servers — the page you are reading makes no third-party requests, and its only scripts are served from this site: a cookie-free page and click counter, the find-your-app sliders, and the “dedicated apps only” filter. The site is paid for by its owner, and the About page says who that is.
Updates
Apps change prices and limits without notice. Every page shows a facts checked date — the newest source it cites. We re-check the fourteen apps on a schedule — a script compares every quoted passage with the live page each week — and whenever a reader reports a change; a corrected page gets a new facts-checked date.
Questions people ask
Do you test the apps yourselves?
Not for the facts on this site. Every fact is a statement the app makes about itself on its own pricing page, help centre, privacy policy, security page or App Store privacy label. That is a deliberate limit: it means every cell can be checked by anyone, and it means we never report something an app has not put in writing. Where an app says nothing, the table says ‘not stated’.
Why isn't the app I use listed?
The fourteen apps here are the ones families ask about most. Others we have seen mentioned but not yet checked include Viallo and Trove. If you’d like one added, email hello@familyphotoapps.com — we add apps when we can source every criterion from the app’s own pages.
What if a fact is wrong?
Email hello@familyphotoapps.com with the app and the page that contradicts us. We check it against the source and correct the fact and the date. Apps change their terms often, so the ‘checked’ date on every page is the newest source it cites.