head to head · open source
photocraft vs govips
photocraft has 58,515 GitHub stars, 9,919 forks, 1,208 open issues and last shipped today. govips has 1,675 stars, 220 forks, 5 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. photocraft leads on adoption by 3,393% (58,515 vs 1,675 stars). photocraft is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; govips is written in Go under MIT. photocraft has attracted 17% as many forks as stars, govips 13%. photocraft 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
| photocraft | govips | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 59K | ★ 1.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-14 | 2026-10-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.9K | ⑂ 220 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick photocraft if
- You weight community size — 59K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick govips if
- You want the govips feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and govips fits your workflow better
About photocraft
PhotoCraft is an open source, clean room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop, written in pure Rust, for image editors who want a native offline app they can own rather than a subscription.
read the full photocraft overview →
About govips
govips is an MIT licensed Go library that wraps libvips to give Go developers fast, concurrent image processing and resizing through first class Go types, aimed at teams that build image pipelines, thumbnail services, or format conversion inside Go applications.
read the full govips overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is photocraft or govips more popular?
photocraft has 58,515 GitHub stars and govips has 1,675. photocraft has the larger community by that measure.
Are photocraft and govips free?
Both are open source. photocraft is licensed under Apache-2.0 and govips under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between photocraft and govips?
photocraft is written in Rust and govips 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, photocraft or govips?
Choose photocraft if you want the larger community (58,515 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose govips if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.