head to head · open source
sharp vs photon
sharp has 32,735 GitHub stars, 1,440 forks, 123 open issues and last shipped yesterday. photon has 3,897 stars, 189 forks, 49 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. sharp leads on adoption by 740% (32,735 vs 3,897 stars). sharp is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0; photon is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. sharp has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, photon 5%. 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-processing), 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 | photon | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 3.9K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-10-02 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 189 |
| 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 photon if
- You want the photon feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and photon 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 photon
photon is an open source Rust library that compiles to WebAssembly for fast image processing in the browser, on Node, or natively, aimed at developers who need to apply image effects from their own applications.
read the full photon overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is sharp or photon more popular?
sharp has 32,735 GitHub stars and photon has 3,897. sharp has the larger community by that measure.
Are sharp and photon free?
Both are open source. sharp is licensed under Apache-2.0 and photon under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between sharp and photon?
sharp is written in JavaScript and photon in Rust. 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 photon?
Choose sharp if you want the larger community (32,735 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose photon if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.