head to head · open source
sharp vs SimpleITK
sharp has 32,777 GitHub stars, 1,444 forks, 123 open issues and last shipped yesterday. SimpleITK has 1,092 stars, 235 forks, 101 open issues and last shipped today. sharp leads on adoption by 2,902% (32,777 vs 1,092 stars). sharp is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0; SimpleITK is written in C++ under Apache-2.0. sharp has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, SimpleITK 22%. SimpleITK 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 | SimpleITK | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-10-19 | 2026-10-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 235 |
| 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 SimpleITK if
- You want the SimpleITK feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and SimpleITK 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 SimpleITK
SimpleITK ========= SimpleITK is an image analysis toolkit with a large number of components supporting general filtering operations, image segmentation and registration. It is built on top of the Insight Segmentation and Registration Toolkit ITK with the intent of providing a simplified interface to ITK. SimpleITK itself is written in C++ but is available for a large number of programming languages. Currently, these include: Python R Java C Lua TCL Ruby Wrapping of the C++ code is accomplished through SWIG, in principle, any language wrapped by SWIG should be applicable to SimpleITK. Unlike ITK's support of n…
read the full SimpleITK overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is sharp or SimpleITK more popular?
sharp has 32,777 GitHub stars and SimpleITK has 1,092. sharp has the larger community by that measure.
Are sharp and SimpleITK free?
Both are open source. sharp is licensed under Apache-2.0 and SimpleITK under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between sharp and SimpleITK?
sharp is written in JavaScript and SimpleITK 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 SimpleITK?
Choose sharp if you want the larger community (32,777 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose SimpleITK if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.