head to head · open source
filepond vs libvips
filepond has 16,393 GitHub stars, 848 forks, 142 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. libvips has 11,656 stars, 797 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped yesterday. filepond leads on adoption by 41% (16,393 vs 11,656 stars). filepond is written in JavaScript under MIT; libvips is written in C under LGPL-2.1. filepond has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, libvips 7%. libvips was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (image-processing), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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
| filepond | libvips | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 12K |
| License | MIT | LGPL-2.1 |
| Written in | JavaScript | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-15 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 848 | ⑂ 797 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick filepond if
- You weight community size — 16K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- 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 filepond
FilePond is an MIT licensed JavaScript file upload library for front end developers who need drag and drop, clipboard paste, API driven uploads, and automatic image optimization in one dependency.
read the full filepond 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 filepond or libvips more popular?
filepond has 16,393 GitHub stars and libvips has 11,656. filepond has the larger community by that measure.
Are filepond and libvips free?
Both are open source. filepond is licensed under MIT and libvips under LGPL-2.1. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between filepond and libvips?
filepond is written in JavaScript 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, filepond or libvips?
Choose filepond if you want the larger community (16,393 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose libvips if its feature set, stack or LGPL-2.1 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.