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 — imgix 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.

## imgix (imgix)
- URL: https://imgix.com
- Category: Images, video & files
- Cost: paid — No free tier; 30-day trial with 100 credits. Starter $25/mo (100 credits, 50 GB storage, 100 GB bandwidth); Basic $75/mo; Growth $300/mo. Overage $0.12-$0.25/credit
- What it is: Real-time image processing CDN that sits in front of your existing origin — S3, GCS, a web folder — and transforms on request via URL parameters. Supports over 100 params, automatic AVIF/WebP with auto=format, and content-aware cropping. No re-upload or migration needed.
- Why builders pick it: Best when your images already live somewhere and you only want a rendering layer. Point it at your bucket, add ?auto=format,compress, and every image negotiates AVIF or WebP with no storage migration.
- Trap: Moved to a credit-based model, so storage, bandwidth and renders draw on one pool and forecasting is harder than the old per-origin-image pricing. There is no permanent free tier — only a 30-day trial.
- Wiring: npm i @imgix/js-core
- Full dossier: /api/public/tools/imgix

## 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=imgix,sharp,uppy