head to head · open source
sharp vs RawTherapee
sharp has 32,695 GitHub stars, 1,437 forks, 123 open issues and last shipped yesterday. RawTherapee has 4,178 stars, 419 forks, 1,028 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sharp leads on adoption by 683% (32,695 vs 4,178 stars). sharp is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0; RawTherapee is written in C++ under GPL-3.0. sharp has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, RawTherapee 10%. RawTherapee was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | RawTherapee | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 4.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 419 |
| 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 RawTherapee if
- You want the RawTherapee feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and RawTherapee 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 RawTherapee
RawTherapee is a cross platform raw photo processing program released as libre software under the GNU General Public License Version 3. It is written mostly in C++ with a GTK+ front end, and it reads raw files through a patched version of dcraw combined with an in house solution that adds support for certain camera models dcraw does not handle and improves the accuracy of certain raw files dcraw already supports. The project lives in the open source photography ecosystem, with its documentation hosted on RawPedia and its community discussion taking place in the RawTherapee section of the pixls.us forum.…
read the full RawTherapee overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is sharp or RawTherapee more popular?
sharp has 32,695 GitHub stars and RawTherapee has 4,178. sharp has the larger community by that measure.
Are sharp and RawTherapee free?
Both are open source. sharp is licensed under Apache-2.0 and RawTherapee under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between sharp and RawTherapee?
sharp is written in JavaScript and RawTherapee 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 RawTherapee?
Choose sharp if you want the larger community (32,695 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose RawTherapee if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.