head to head · open source
photocraft vs sharp
photocraft has 46,731 GitHub stars, 7,428 forks, 1,208 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sharp has 32,748 stars, 1,440 forks, 123 open issues and last shipped yesterday. photocraft leads on adoption by 43% (46,731 vs 32,748 stars). photocraft is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; sharp is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0. photocraft has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, sharp 4%. 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 | sharp | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 33K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-11 | 2026-10-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.4K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick photocraft if
- You weight community size — 47K 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 sharp if
- You want the sharp feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and sharp 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 sharp
sharp is a high performance Node.js image processing library that converts large images in common formats into smaller, web friendly JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF and AVIF files, and it is built for JavaScript developers who need fast, dependency light resizing inside Node.js, Deno or Bun applications.
read the full sharp overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is photocraft or sharp more popular?
photocraft has 46,731 GitHub stars and sharp has 32,748. photocraft has the larger community by that measure.
Are photocraft and sharp free?
Both are open source. photocraft is licensed under Apache-2.0 and sharp under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between photocraft and sharp?
photocraft is written in Rust and sharp in JavaScript. 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 sharp?
Choose photocraft if you want the larger community (46,731 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose sharp if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.