How ImageScript compares to other image libraries for Node.js: speed, file sizes and what installing each takes. ImageScript is plain JavaScript with no dependencies, so it runs wherever JavaScript does, like Jimp, image-js and PureJsImage; sharp and @napi-rs/canvas wrap native libraries (libvips, Skia), Photon is WebAssembly, and so is jsquash (Squoosh's libavif and libjxl, for AVIF and JPEG XL).
Time per operation (less is faster), measured 2026-11-08 with Node.js v26.13.0 on AMD EPYC 7763 64-Core Processor, ImageScript 3.20.2.
| ImageScript | Jimp | image-js | PureJsImage | Photon | sharp | jsquash | @napi-rs/canvas | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| decode JPEG | 61 ms | 152 ms | 151 ms | 125 ms | 47 ms | 15 ms | – | 20 ms |
| decode PNG | 30 ms | 66 ms | 115 ms | 78 ms | 24 ms | 19 ms | – | 19 ms |
| decode WebP (lossy) | 79 ms | – | – | 103 ms | 89 ms | 28 ms | – | 17 ms |
| decode AVIF | 239 ms | – | – | 1.8 s | – | 80 ms | 223 ms | 62 ms |
| decode JPEG XL | 417 ms | – | – | fails | – | – | 462 ms | 69 ms |
| decode animated GIF | 66 ms | – | – | – | – | 70 ms | – | – |
| decode animated WebP | 265 ms | – | – | – | – | 294 ms | – | – |
| encode JPEG (quality 80) | 61 ms | 419 ms | 108 ms | 144 ms | 113 ms | 18 ms | – | 29 ms |
| encode PNG | 186 ms | 236 ms | 321 ms | 551 ms | 101 ms | 136 ms | – | 471 ms |
| encode WebP (quality 80) | 203 ms | – | – | 133 ms | – | 187 ms | – | 161 ms |
| encode WebP (lossless) | 1.3 s | – | – | 2.2 s | 41 ms | 1.5 s | – | 489 ms |
| encode AVIF (quality 60) | 5.2 s | – | – | 1.4 s | – | 2.6 s | 2.4 s | – |
| encode JPEG XL (quality 90) | 2.1 s | – | – | – | – | – | 2.5 s | – |
| encode JPEG XL (lossless) | 894 ms | – | – | – | – | – | 448 ms | – |
| encode animated GIF | 237 ms | – | – | – | – | 1.2 s | – | – |
| encode animated WebP (q 80) | 997 ms | – | – | – | – | 776 ms | – | – |
| resize to half | 14 ms | 15 ms | 67 ms | 67 ms | 67 ms | 9.5 ms | – | 3.2 ms |
| resize to half, bicubic | 46 ms | 195 ms | 316 ms | – | 104 ms | 10 ms | – | – |
| thumbnail (cover 400×400) | 17 ms | 44 ms | – | 42 ms | – | 5.7 ms | – | 1.4 ms |
| crop | 1.3 ms | 19 ms | 15 ms | 10 ms | 5.3 ms | 0.94 ms | – | 0.85 ms |
| rotate by 30° | 40 ms | 622 ms | 785 ms | 508 ms | 215 ms | 41 ms | – | 27 ms |
| rotate by 90° | 14 ms | 44 ms | 22 ms | 127 ms | 148 ms | 4.8 ms | – | 13 ms |
| flip | 2.4 ms | 99 ms | 12 ms | 59 ms | 18 ms | 4.3 ms | – | 9.7 ms |
| blur (radius 5) | 74 ms | 78 s | 847 ms | – | 156 ms | 19 ms | – | 16 ms |
| sharpen | 750 ms | – | – | – | 106 ms | 227 ms | – | – |
| composite an overlay | 3.6 ms | 33 ms | 9.5 ms | – | 8.2 ms | 5.4 ms | – | 2.5 ms |
| greyscale | 7.2 ms | 120 ms | 18 ms | – | 7.0 ms | 26 ms | – | 7.4 ms |
| brightness and contrast | 13 ms | 273 ms | – | – | 29 ms | 15 ms | – | 14 ms |
| render text | 0.62 ms | – | – | – | – | 0.56 ms | – | 0.34 ms |
| render SVG | 161 ms | – | – | – | – | 38 ms | – | 12 ms |
| thumbnail, keeping HDR | 183 ms | – | – | – | – | 160 ms | – | – |
Encoded sizes:
| ImageScript | Jimp | image-js | PureJsImage | Photon | sharp | jsquash | @napi-rs/canvas | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| photo PNG | 2.0 MB | 2.7 MB | 2.8 MB | 2.1 MB | 2.8 MB | 2.8 MB | – | 2.1 MB |
| photo JPEG | 218 kB, 40.6 dB | 260 kB, 40.9 dB | 260 kB, 40.9 dB | 222 kB, 40.5 dB | 257 kB, 40.4 dB | 218 kB, 40.6 dB | – | 218 kB, 40.6 dB |
| photo WebP | 1.2 MB | – | – | 2.1 MB | 1.7 MB | 1.2 MB | – | 1.4 MB |
| graphic PNG | 795 kB | 2.0 MB | 736 kB | 811 kB | 2.2 MB | 718 kB | – | 1.0 MB |
| graphic JPEG | 276 kB, 37.3 dB | 315 kB, 37.4 dB | 315 kB, 37.4 dB | 286 kB, 37.3 dB | 314 kB, 37.4 dB | 275 kB, 37.3 dB | – | 276 kB, 37.3 dB |
| graphic WebP | 277 kB | – | – | 758 kB | 856 kB | 239 kB | – | 631 kB |
| animation GIF | 825 kB, identical pixels | – | – | – | – | 720 kB, 45.6 dB | – | – |
| photo AVIF | 93 kB, 40.9 dB | – | – | 992 kB, 32.7 dB | – | 91 kB, 40.6 dB | 80 kB, 40.2 dB | – |
| photo JPEG XL | 245 kB, 44.5 dB | – | – | – | – | – | 227 kB, 44 dB | – |
| graphic AVIF | 147 kB, 41 dB | – | – | 709 kB, 38.5 dB | – | 114 kB, 38.7 dB | 136 kB, 40.5 dB | – |
| graphic JPEG XL | 230 kB, 43.4 dB | – | – | – | – | – | 193 kB, 41.8 dB | – |
| photo WebP lossy | 123 kB, 40 dB | – | – | 153 kB, 38.6 dB | – | 118 kB, 40.4 dB | – | 118 kB, 40.4 dB |
| photo JPEG XL lossless | 1.2 MB | – | – | – | – | – | 1.2 MB | – |
| graphic WebP lossy | 241 kB, 38.4 dB | – | – | 301 kB, 38 dB | – | 233 kB, 39 dB | – | 234 kB, 39 dB |
| graphic JPEG XL lossless | 663 kB | – | – | – | – | – | 666 kB | – |
| animation WebP | 529 kB, 33.6 dB | – | – | – | – | 683 kB, 33.1 dB | – | – |
| ImageScript | Jimp | image-js | PureJsImage | Photon | sharp | jsquash | @napi-rs/canvas | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| kind | JavaScript | JavaScript | JavaScript | JavaScript | WebAssembly | native (libvips) | WebAssembly | native (Skia) |
| package | imagescript@3.20.2 |
jimp@1.6.1 |
image-js@1.7.1 |
purejsimage@0.17.0 |
@silvia-odwyer/photon-node@0.3.4 |
sharp@0.35.5 |
@jsquash/avif@2.1.1 @jsquash/jxl@1.3.0 |
@napi-rs/canvas@1.0.11 |
| install size | 2.6 MB | 26.8 MB | 47.8 MB | 6.7 MB | 2.3 MB | 20.3 MB | 14.2 MB | 35.0 MB |
| packages | 1 | 64 | 55 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 3 | 2 |
- Inputs (in
inputs/, sources in inputs/SOURCES.md): a 1920×1080 photo (JPEG, and made from it when the benchmark starts, PNG, lossy WebP, AVIF by sharp (libaom) and JPEG XL by jsquash (libjxl), at the qualities below), a 1434×1434 graphic with transparency (PNG), a 445×445 diagram with transparency placed on the photo (PNG), a 300×300 GIF with 101 frames (and made from it, an animated WebP by sharp at quality 80). - Lossy WebP, AVIF and JPEG XL are encoded at the same nominal quality (80, 60 and 90); as the libraries' scales differ, the file sizes come with their PSNR (of the color over black, decoded by libwebp, libavif and libjxl). jsquash's libjxl runs at the effort ImageScript's default matches (cjxl's 5 lossy, 3 lossless; its own default is 7). PureJsImage's AVIF encoder has no quality option, and its JPEG XL decoder doesn't support everything libjxl's files use, which shows as failing. jsquash only encodes and decodes AVIF and JPEG XL (it gets the other inputs as pixels); @napi-rs/canvas decodes both with Skia's codecs, but doesn't encode them.
- Rendering: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog, 0123456789" in Source Sans 3 at 64px, and
tests/svgs/features.svg(gradients, clipping, CSS) at 1920 pixels wide. Jimp, image-js, PureJsImage and Photon can't render TrueType/OpenType fonts or SVGs; @napi-rs/canvas (Skia's SVG module) ignores its CSS, so it draws a little less. - Every operation starts from the same decoded image and returns a new one: libraries that change images in place clone first, sharp runs a pipeline from raw pixels back to raw pixels, PureJsImage (which has no decoded images) one from a BMP back to a BMP, @napi-rs/canvas draws into a new canvas. PureJsImage has no blur, composite, rendering or animated GIFs.
- Where the library lets you choose, resizing is bilinear (or bicubic, in its own row), the thumbnail covers 400×400 (cropping the sides), blurring is gaussian with a radius or sigma of 5, sharpening an unsharp mask of radius or sigma 1 (Photon: its 3×3 sharpening kernel), rotating by 30° grows the image to fit, brightness and contrast go up 20% (Jimp's and Photon's scales converted). image-js's and sharp's greyscale make one grey channel (and alpha). Each library uses its own defaults otherwise, e.g. its PNG compression level.
- Threads: ImageScript uses worker threads where they pay off (the processors available, at most 8), and sharp gets
as many (
sharp.concurrency(); its default on glibc Linux without jemalloc, like on CI, is one). The other libraries run on one thread (jsquash turns its threaded builds off in Node). - tinybench, at least 1.5 seconds and 3 runs per measurement, every library in its own process.
- The release workflow runs the benchmark for every release and commits the results, on a GitHub Actions runner; runners vary, so compare libraries within one run rather than between runs.
- Install sizes:
npm install <library>in an empty project, the apparent size ofnode_modules.
Run it: npm install in this directory, then node run.js (on an idle machine; IMAGESCRIPT=local measures
this checkout after npm run build instead of the version from npm; it runs startup.js too), node installs.js and node report.js.