head to head · open source
sharp vs pymatting
sharp has 32,747 GitHub stars, 1,441 forks, 123 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. pymatting has 1,921 stars, 227 forks, 11 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. sharp leads on adoption by 1,605% (32,747 vs 1,921 stars). sharp is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0; pymatting is written in Python under MIT. sharp has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, pymatting 12%. 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 | pymatting | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 1.9K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-10-09 | 2026-09-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 227 |
| 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 pymatting if
- You want the pymatting feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and pymatting 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 pymatting
PyMatting is a Python library for alpha matting that lets developers and researchers estimate a foreground object's alpha channel from an image and a hand drawn trimap.
read the full pymatting overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is sharp or pymatting more popular?
sharp has 32,747 GitHub stars and pymatting has 1,921. sharp has the larger community by that measure.
Are sharp and pymatting free?
Both are open source. sharp is licensed under Apache-2.0 and pymatting under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between sharp and pymatting?
sharp is written in JavaScript and pymatting in Python. 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 pymatting?
Choose sharp if you want the larger community (32,747 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose pymatting if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.