head to head · open source
sharp vs imagor
sharp has 32,732 GitHub stars, 1,441 forks, 123 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. imagor has 4,026 stars, 176 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. sharp leads on adoption by 713% (32,732 vs 4,026 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%. sharp 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 | ★ 4.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-28 | 2026-09-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 176 |
| 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 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 imagor
imagor is a fast, secure image processing server and Go library built on libvips, intended for developers who need on demand image resizing, formatting, and filtering over HTTP or as an embedded Go package.
read the full imagor overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is sharp or imagor more popular?
sharp has 32,732 GitHub stars and imagor has 4,026. 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 (32,732 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.