head to head · open source
sharp vs imgproxy
sharp has 32,821 GitHub stars, 1,448 forks, 123 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. imgproxy has 11,169 stars, 787 forks, 67 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. sharp leads on adoption by 194% (32,821 vs 11,169 stars). sharp is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0; imgproxy is written in Go under Apache-2.0. sharp has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, imgproxy 7%. imgproxy 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 | imgproxy | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 11K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-29 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 787 |
| 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 imgproxy if
- You want the imgproxy 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 imgproxy 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 imgproxy
Website Blog Documentation imgproxy Pro imgproxy is a fast and secure standalone server for resizing, processing, and converting images. The guiding principles behind imgproxy are speed, security, and simplicity. imgproxy is able to quickly and easily resize, process, and optimize images on the fly, and it's well equipped to handle a large amount of image processing. imgproxy is a drop in replacement for all the image processing code inside your web application (such as using image processing libraries or calling command line tools). With imgproxy, you don’t need to repeatedly re prepare images to fit your…
read the full imgproxy overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is sharp or imgproxy more popular?
sharp has 32,821 GitHub stars and imgproxy has 11,169. sharp has the larger community by that measure.
Are sharp and imgproxy free?
Both are open source. sharp is licensed under Apache-2.0 and imgproxy under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between sharp and imgproxy?
sharp is written in JavaScript and imgproxy 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 imgproxy?
Choose sharp if you want the larger community (32,821 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose imgproxy if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.