head to head · open source
sharp vs photoview
sharp has 32,817 GitHub stars, 1,447 forks, 123 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. photoview has 6,565 stars, 495 forks, 189 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. sharp leads on adoption by 400% (32,817 vs 6,565 stars). sharp is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0; photoview is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. sharp has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, photoview 8%. photoview was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (exif), 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 | photoview | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 6.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-29 | 2026-10-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 495 |
| 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 photoview if
- You want the photoview feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and photoview 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 photoview
Photoview is a simple and user friendly photo gallery that's made for photographers and aims to provide an easy and fast way to navigate directories, with thousands of high resolution photos. You configure Photoview to look for photos and videos within a directory on your file system. The scanner automatically picks up your media and starts to generate thumbnail images to make browsing super fast. When your media has been scanned, they show up on the website, organised in the same way as on the filesystem. If you have questions regarding setup or development, feel free to join the Discord server ATTENTION to…
read the full photoview overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is sharp or photoview more popular?
sharp has 32,817 GitHub stars and photoview has 6,565. sharp has the larger community by that measure.
Are sharp and photoview free?
Both are open source. sharp is licensed under Apache-2.0 and photoview under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between sharp and photoview?
sharp is written in JavaScript and photoview 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 photoview?
Choose sharp if you want the larger community (32,817 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose photoview if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.