head to head · open source
photocraft vs thumbnailator
photocraft has 78,713 GitHub stars, 13,911 forks, 1,208 open issues and last shipped yesterday. thumbnailator has 5,428 stars, 787 forks, 55 open issues and last shipped 9 months ago. photocraft leads on adoption by 1,350% (78,713 vs 5,428 stars). photocraft is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; thumbnailator is written in Java under MIT. photocraft has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, thumbnailator 14%. 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 | thumbnailator | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 79K | ★ 5.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-11 | 2026-02-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 14K | ⑂ 787 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick photocraft if
- You weight community size — 79K 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 thumbnailator if
- You want the thumbnailator feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and thumbnailator fits your workflow better
About photocraft
PhotoCraft Image editing; an open source, clean room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop, rebuilt in pure Rust. Layers, masks, adjustment layers, layer styles, type, vectors, brushes and real PSD files, in a native app written entirely in Rust. Open source, offline, and yours. PhotoCraft on getartcraft.com · ArtCraft · All Crafting Apps A caption card with a drop shadow, live type, and Vibrance and Curves adjustment layers, with the Curves editor open. The Great Wave off Kanagawa , Katsushika Hokusai, c. 1831 [!NOTE] ArtCraft is a community of artists from all walks of life. Digital, generative, music, games…
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About thumbnailator
October 1, 2025: Thumbnailator 0.4.21 has been released! See Changes for details. Thumbnailator is now available through Maven! What is Thumbnailator? Thumbnailator is a thumbnail generation library for Java. Why Thumbnailator? Making high quality thumbnails in Java can be a fairly difficult task. Learning how to use the Image I/O API, Java 2D API, image processing, image scaling techniques, ... but fear not! Thumbnailator will take care of all those things for you! Thumbnailator is a single JAR file with no dependencies to external libraries, making development and deployment simple and easy. It is also…
read the full thumbnailator overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is photocraft or thumbnailator more popular?
photocraft has 78,713 GitHub stars and thumbnailator has 5,428. photocraft has the larger community by that measure.
Are photocraft and thumbnailator free?
Both are open source. photocraft is licensed under Apache-2.0 and thumbnailator under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between photocraft and thumbnailator?
photocraft is written in Rust and thumbnailator in Java. 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 thumbnailator?
Choose photocraft if you want the larger community (78,713 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose thumbnailator if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.