head to head · open source
Darktable vs libvips
Darktable has 13,106 GitHub stars, 1,434 forks, 678 open issues and last shipped today. libvips has 11,656 stars, 797 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Darktable leads on adoption by 12% (13,106 vs 11,656 stars). Darktable is written in C under GPL-3.0; libvips is written in C under LGPL-2.1. Darktable has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, libvips 7%. Darktable was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Darktable | libvips | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 13K | ★ 12K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | LGPL-2.1 |
| Written in | C | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 797 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Darktable if
- You weight community size — 13K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick libvips if
- You want the libvips feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-2.1 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and libvips fits your workflow better
About Darktable
Darktable is an open source photography workflow application and non destructive raw developer. It acts as a virtual lighttable and darkroom for photographers, and it lives in the open source photography ecosystem as a C project licensed under the GPL 3.0. It manages digital negatives in a database, lets a user view them through a zoomable lighttable, and supports raw development, enhancement, and export to local or remote storage.
read the full Darktable overview →
About libvips
libvips is a demand driven, horizontally threaded image processing library in C, licensed LGPL 2.1 or later, for developers who need to resize, convert and analyse large images quickly without exhausting memory.
read the full libvips overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Darktable or libvips more popular?
Darktable has 13,106 GitHub stars and libvips has 11,656. Darktable has the larger community by that measure.
Are Darktable and libvips free?
Both are open source. Darktable is licensed under GPL-3.0 and libvips under LGPL-2.1. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Darktable and libvips?
Darktable is written in C and libvips in C. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Darktable or libvips?
Choose Darktable if you want the larger community (13,106 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose libvips if its feature set, stack or LGPL-2.1 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.