Stop guessing which one. Put them side by side.

The grid says what these tools are. This says what builders did about it — one decision per person, changeable whenever you change your mind.

# Tool comparison — ImageKit vs Sharp vs Uppy

Source: Kbaise, a directory of tools that work with Lovable projects.
Pick one and tell me why before writing any integration code.

## ImageKit (imagekit)
- URL: https://imagekit.io
- Category: Images, video & files
- Cost: mixed — Free 20 GB bandwidth/mo + 3 GB DAM storage; Lite $9/mo (40 GB, $0.50/GB over); Pro $89/mo (225 GB bandwidth + 225 GB storage, $0.45/GB over)
- What it is: Media optimization and delivery platform with URL-based transformations, a DAM and video streaming. Bills primarily on delivered bandwidth rather than per transformation. Attaches to an external origin such as S3 or your own server, or stores media itself.
- Why builders pick it: The cheapest credible Cloudinary alternative with a real forever-free tier. Bandwidth-only billing means unlimited transformation variants cost nothing extra — good for responsive srcset where one image spawns eight renditions.
- Trap: The free tier grants 20 GB bandwidth but only 3 GB of managed DAM storage, so a large photo archive needs an external origin. Video and AI extensions bill in separate unit pools on top of bandwidth.
- Wiring: npm i @imagekit/javascript
- Full dossier: /api/public/tools/imagekit

## Sharp (sharp)
- URL: https://sharp.pixelplumbing.com
- Category: Images, video & files
- Cost: free — Free and open source under Apache-2.0. Infrastructure cost only — you run it on your own compute
- What it is: High-performance Node.js image processing built on libvips. Reads and writes JPEG, PNG, WebP, AVIF, GIF, TIFF and SVG, and resizes roughly 4-5x faster than ImageMagick by streaming small regions of uncompressed data instead of loading whole images into memory.
- Why builders pick it: The engine underneath most hosted services and Next.js image optimization. Use it to pre-generate AVIF and WebP derivatives at build time and serve them as static files — zero per-transformation cost, forever.
- Trap: You own the caching, invalidation, URL scheme and CDN — Sharp is a library, not a service. Native libvips binaries can complicate deployment on some serverless targets and on Alpine or musl-based containers.
- Wiring: npm i sharp
- Full dossier: /api/public/tools/sharp

## Uppy (uppy)
- URL: https://uppy.io
- Category: Images, video & files
- Cost: free — Free and MIT licensed, no paid edition — all plugins ship in the base package. Self-host the optional Companion server, or use the one Transloadit hosts
- What it is: Modular JavaScript upload UI: drag and drop, progress, retries, resumable tus uploads, crash recovery, image cropping before upload and 40 locales. The optional Companion server pulls files straight from Google Drive, Dropbox, Instagram or a URL without routing through the user's device.
- Why builders pick it: The best upload front end you can get without building one. Resumable uploads and remote-source imports work against any backend — S3, tus, XHR or Transloadit — and nothing about it locks you to a vendor.
- Trap: Uppy only handles the client side; storage, transformation and delivery are still yours to build. Remote sources require running and securing the Companion server plus your own OAuth credentials.
- Wiring: npm i @uppy/core @uppy/dashboard @uppy/tus
- Full dossier: /api/public/tools/uppy

## Quick read

- Free with no card: Sharp, Uppy.

## Rules
1. Prefer the free tier when no budget was stated, and say what the ceiling is.
2. Read the full dossier before integrating.
3. Fetch /api/public/models before writing any AI model ID.

Agents can fetch the same thing: GET /api/public/compare?slugs=imagekit,sharp,uppy