head to head · open source
sharp vs imagor
sharp has 32,850 GitHub stars, 1,452 forks, 123 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. imagor has 4,059 stars, 180 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. sharp leads on adoption by 709% (32,850 vs 4,059 stars). sharp is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0; imagor is written in Go under Apache-2.0. sharp has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, imagor 4%. imagor was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 5 topic tags (avif, image, image-processing, jpeg), 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 | imagor | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 4.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-13 | 2026-11-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 180 |
| 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 imagor if
- You want the imagor feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and imagor fits your workflow better
About sharp
sharp The typical use case for this high speed Node API module is to convert large images in common formats to smaller, web friendly JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF and AVIF images of varying dimensions. It can be used with all JavaScript runtimes that provide support for Node API v9, including Node.js ( = 20.9.0), Deno and Bun. Resizing an image is typically 4x 5x faster than using the quickest ImageMagick and GraphicsMagick settings due to its use of libvips. Colour spaces, embedded ICC profiles and alpha transparency channels are all handled correctly. Lanczos resampling ensures quality is not sacrificed for speed. As…
read the full sharp overview →
About imagor
imagor imagor is a fast, secure image processing server and Go library. imagor uses one of the most efficient image processing libraries, libvips with the Go binding vipsgen. It is typically 4 8x faster than using the quickest ImageMagick settings. imagor implements libvips streaming to facilitate parallel processing pipelines and achieve high network throughput. Benchmarks show imagor is one of the fastest image processing servers. imagor supports a wide range of image processing use cases, available as a HTTP server with first class Docker support. It adopts the thumbor URL syntax representing a high…
read the full imagor overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is sharp or imagor more popular?
sharp has 32,850 GitHub stars and imagor has 4,059. sharp has the larger community by that measure.
Are sharp and imagor free?
Both are open source. sharp is licensed under Apache-2.0 and imagor under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between sharp and imagor?
sharp is written in JavaScript and imagor 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, sharp or imagor?
Choose sharp if you want the larger community (32,850 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose imagor if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.