head to head · open source
sharp vs libvips
sharp has 32,817 GitHub stars, 1,447 forks, 123 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. libvips has 11,779 stars, 802 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. sharp leads on adoption by 179% (32,817 vs 11,779 stars). sharp is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0; libvips is written in C under LGPL-2.1. sharp has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, libvips 7%. libvips was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (image-processing, jpeg, libvips), 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 | libvips | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 12K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | LGPL-2.1 |
| Written in | JavaScript | C |
| Last push | 2026-10-29 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 802 |
| 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 libvips if
- You want the libvips feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-2.1 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and libvips 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 libvips
libvips: an image processing library Introduction libvips is a demand driven, horizontally threaded image processing library. Compared to similar libraries, libvips runs quickly and uses little memory. libvips is licensed under the LGPL 2.1 or later. It has around 300 operations covering arithmetic, histograms, convolution, morphological operations, frequency filtering, colour, resampling, statistics and others. It supports a large range of numeric types, from 8 bit int to 128 bit complex. Images can have any number of bands. It supports a good range of image formats, including JPEG, JPEG 2000, JPEG XL, TIFF…
read the full libvips overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is sharp or libvips more popular?
sharp has 32,817 GitHub stars and libvips has 11,779. sharp has the larger community by that measure.
Are sharp and libvips free?
Both are open source. sharp is licensed under Apache-2.0 and libvips under LGPL-2.1. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between sharp and libvips?
sharp is written in JavaScript and libvips 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 libvips?
Choose sharp if you want the larger community (32,817 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose libvips if its feature set, stack or LGPL-2.1 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.