head to head · open source
OpenCut vs libvips
OpenCut has 97,156 GitHub stars, 9,671 forks, 378 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. libvips has 11,779 stars, 802 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenCut leads on adoption by 725% (97,156 vs 11,779 stars). OpenCut is written in TypeScript under MIT; libvips is written in C under LGPL-2.1. OpenCut has attracted 10% 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.
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
| OpenCut | libvips | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 97K | ★ 12K |
| License | MIT | LGPL-2.1 |
| Written in | TypeScript | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-24 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.7K | ⑂ 802 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick OpenCut if
- You weight community size — 97K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- 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 OpenCut
OpenCut A free and open source video editor for web, desktop, and mobile. Status OpenCut is being rewritten from the ground up. What's coming: An Editor API First class third party plugins (made possible by a plugin first architecture) Desktop, mobile, and browser from one codebase (Rust core) MCP server (for AI agents) Headless mode (automation, batch rendering) A scripting tab directly in the editor You can still find the previous version at opencut app/opencut classic, which is the one to reach for today. opencut.app still runs the classic version. The rewrite will live at new.opencut.app until it's ready to…
read the full OpenCut overview →
About libvips
libvips: an image processing library Introduction libvips is a demand driven, horizontally threaded image processing library. Compared to similar libraries, libvips runs quickly and uses little memory. libvips is licensed under the LGPL 2.1 or later. It has around 300 operations covering arithmetic, histograms, convolution, morphological operations, frequency filtering, colour, resampling, statistics and others. It supports a large range of numeric types, from 8 bit int to 128 bit complex. Images can have any number of bands. It supports a good range of image formats, including JPEG, JPEG 2000, JPEG XL, TIFF…
read the full libvips overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenCut or libvips more popular?
OpenCut has 97,156 GitHub stars and libvips has 11,779. OpenCut has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenCut and libvips free?
Both are open source. OpenCut is licensed under MIT and libvips under LGPL-2.1. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenCut and libvips?
OpenCut is written in TypeScript 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, OpenCut or libvips?
Choose OpenCut if you want the larger community (97,156 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose libvips if its feature set, stack or LGPL-2.1 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.