head to head · open source
libvips vs imgproxy
libvips has 11,656 GitHub stars, 797 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped yesterday. imgproxy has 11,080 stars, 776 forks, 67 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. libvips leads on adoption by 5% (11,656 vs 11,080 stars). libvips is written in C under LGPL-2.1; imgproxy is written in Go under Apache-2.0. libvips has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, imgproxy 7%. libvips was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (image-processing, jpeg, libvips), 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
| libvips | imgproxy | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 11K |
| License | LGPL-2.1 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 797 | ⑂ 776 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick libvips if
- You weight community size — 12K stars and counting
- You want the LGPL-2.1 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick imgproxy if
- You want the imgproxy feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and imgproxy fits your workflow better
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 →
About imgproxy
imgproxy is a fast, secure standalone HTTP server, written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 licence, that resizes, processes, and converts images on the fly for web developers, platform engineers, and teams that want image processing to live in a dedicated service instead of inside their applications.
read the full imgproxy overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is libvips or imgproxy more popular?
libvips has 11,656 GitHub stars and imgproxy has 11,080. libvips has the larger community by that measure.
Are libvips and imgproxy free?
Both are open source. libvips is licensed under LGPL-2.1 and imgproxy under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between libvips and imgproxy?
libvips is written in C and imgproxy in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, libvips or imgproxy?
Choose libvips if you want the larger community (11,656 stars) or its LGPL-2.1 licence terms. Choose imgproxy if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.