head to head · open source
sharp vs photofield
sharp has 32,726 GitHub stars, 1,440 forks, 123 open issues and last shipped yesterday. photofield has 608 stars, 15 forks, 35 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. sharp leads on adoption by 5,283% (32,726 vs 608 stars). sharp is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0; photofield is written in Go under MIT. sharp has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, photofield 2%. sharp was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (image), 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 | photofield | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 608 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-27 | 2026-08-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 15 |
| 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 photofield if
- You want the photofield feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and photofield 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 photofield
Photofield is a self hosted, non invasive, single binary photo gallery written in Go and released under the MIT licence, intended for people who want to browse very large photo collections quickly on their own hardware.
read the full photofield overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is sharp or photofield more popular?
sharp has 32,726 GitHub stars and photofield has 608. sharp has the larger community by that measure.
Are sharp and photofield free?
Both are open source. sharp is licensed under Apache-2.0 and photofield under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between sharp and photofield?
sharp is written in JavaScript and photofield 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 photofield?
Choose sharp if you want the larger community (32,726 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose photofield if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.