head to head · open source
sharp vs flyimg
sharp has 32,764 GitHub stars, 1,442 forks, 123 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. flyimg has 1,229 stars, 123 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 18 days ago. sharp leads on adoption by 2,566% (32,764 vs 1,229 stars). sharp is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0; flyimg is written in PHP under AGPL-3.0. sharp has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, flyimg 10%. sharp was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (avif, image-processing), 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 | flyimg | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 1.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-10-15 | 2026-09-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 123 |
| 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 flyimg if
- You want the flyimg feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and flyimg 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 flyimg
Flyimg is a Dockerized, self hostable image processing service that resizes, crops and compresses images on the fly, serving them in optimized formats such as AVIF, WebP, MozJPEG, PNG and GIF, and it is aimed at developers and teams who want a Cloudinary style image delivery pipeline running on their own infrastructure.
read the full flyimg overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is sharp or flyimg more popular?
sharp has 32,764 GitHub stars and flyimg has 1,229. sharp has the larger community by that measure.
Are sharp and flyimg free?
Both are open source. sharp is licensed under Apache-2.0 and flyimg under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between sharp and flyimg?
sharp is written in JavaScript and flyimg in PHP. 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 flyimg?
Choose sharp if you want the larger community (32,764 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose flyimg if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.