head to head · open source
sharp vs exifcleaner
sharp has 32,743 GitHub stars, 1,440 forks, 123 open issues and last shipped yesterday. exifcleaner has 2,721 stars, 166 forks, 26 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. sharp leads on adoption by 1,103% (32,743 vs 2,721 stars). sharp is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0; exifcleaner is written in TypeScript under MIT. sharp has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, exifcleaner 6%. sharp was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (exif, image, image-processing, javascript), 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
| sharp | exifcleaner | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 2.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-06 | 2026-10-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 166 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick sharp if
- You weight community size — 33K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick exifcleaner if
- You want the exifcleaner feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and exifcleaner fits your workflow better
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 →
About exifcleaner
ExifCleaner is a free, cross platform desktop app for anyone who wants to strip EXIF and other metadata from images, media files, and PDFs before sharing them, without uploading anything to a third party.
read the full exifcleaner overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is sharp or exifcleaner more popular?
sharp has 32,743 GitHub stars and exifcleaner has 2,721. sharp has the larger community by that measure.
Are sharp and exifcleaner free?
Both are open source. sharp is licensed under Apache-2.0 and exifcleaner under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between sharp and exifcleaner?
sharp is written in JavaScript and exifcleaner in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, sharp or exifcleaner?
Choose sharp if you want the larger community (32,743 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose exifcleaner if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.