head to head · open source
sharp vs Krita
sharp has 32,692 GitHub stars, 1,436 forks, 123 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. Krita has 10,388 stars, 856 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sharp leads on adoption by 215% (32,692 vs 10,388 stars). sharp is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0; Krita is written in C++ under GPL-3.0. sharp has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, Krita 8%. Krita was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | Krita | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 10K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-09-13 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 856 |
| 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 Krita if
- You want the Krita feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and Krita 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 Krita
Krita is a free and open source cross platform application for digital painting. It lives in the KDE ecosystem and is built on the KDE and Qt frameworks. The project is licensed under the GNU Public License, Version 3, and the GitHub repository is a mirror of the real code repository at https://invent.kde.org/graphics/krita.git.
read the full Krita overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is sharp or Krita more popular?
sharp has 32,692 GitHub stars and Krita has 10,388. sharp has the larger community by that measure.
Are sharp and Krita free?
Both are open source. sharp is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Krita under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between sharp and Krita?
sharp is written in JavaScript and Krita in C++. 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 Krita?
Choose sharp if you want the larger community (32,692 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Krita if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.