README.md

ImageScript benchmark

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).

Numbers

Time per operation (less is faster), measured 2026-11-04 with Node.js v24.22.2 on Intel(R) Xeon(R) 6975P-C, ImageScript 3.14.0.

	ImageScript 3	Jimp	image-js	PureJsImage	Photon	sharp	jsquash	@napi-rs/canvas
decode JPEG	55 ms	127 ms	143 ms	103 ms	34 ms	13 ms	–	15 ms
decode PNG	28 ms	47 ms	107 ms	71 ms	22 ms	19 ms	–	17 ms
decode WebP (lossy)	67 ms	–	–	83 ms	65 ms	26 ms	–	13 ms
encode JPEG (quality 80)	45 ms	279 ms	90 ms	105 ms	89 ms	15 ms	–	22 ms
encode PNG	144 ms	200 ms	299 ms	477 ms	79 ms	112 ms	–	388 ms
encode WebP (lossless)	1.1 s	–	–	2.1 s	33 ms	1.2 s	–	379 ms
decode AVIF	184 ms	–	–	1.4 s	–	68 ms	169 ms	51 ms
decode JPEG XL	348 ms	–	–	fails	–	–	303 ms	48 ms
encode AVIF (quality 60)	3.7 s	–	–	988 ms	–	1.9 s	1.8 s	–
encode JPEG XL (quality 90)	1.6 s	–	–	–	–	–	3.2 s	–
resize to half	11 ms	11 ms	72 ms	52 ms	38 ms	7.6 ms	–	2.2 ms
rotate by 30°	41 ms	436 ms	615 ms	421 ms	186 ms	33 ms	–	25 ms
blur (radius 5)	54 ms	57 s	541 ms	–	135 ms	13 ms	–	18 ms
composite an overlay	2.0 ms	22 ms	8.3 ms	–	5.0 ms	4.1 ms	–	2.4 ms
crop	1.3 ms	14 ms	15 ms	8.8 ms	3.5 ms	0.73 ms	–	0.71 ms
clone	1.0 ms	1.9 ms	1.6 ms	1.1 ms	2.5 ms	1.1 ms	–	2.3 ms
render text	0.42 ms	–	–	–	–	0.51 ms	–	0.25 ms
render SVG	130 ms	–	–	–	–	30 ms	–	9.8 ms
decode animated GIF	53 ms	–	–	–	–	57 ms	–	–
encode animated GIF	191 ms	–	–	–	–	877 ms	–	–

Encoded sizes:

	ImageScript 3	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	1.3 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	–	–	–	–	–	230 kB, 44.1 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	–	–	–	–	–	194 kB, 41.9 dB	–

	ImageScript 3	Jimp	image-js	PureJsImage	Photon	sharp	jsquash	@napi-rs/canvas
kind	JavaScript	JavaScript	JavaScript	JavaScript	WebAssembly	native (libvips)	WebAssembly	native (Skia)
package	[email protected]	[email protected]	[email protected]	[email protected]	@silvia-odwyer/[email protected]	[email protected]	@jsquash/[email protected] @jsquash/[email protected]	@napi-rs/[email protected]
install size	2.4 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

Method

• 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, effort 7), both 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.
• AVIF and JPEG XL are encoded at the same nominal quality (60 and 90); as the libraries' scales differ, the file sizes come with their PSNR (of the color over black, decoded by libavif and libjxl). 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, blurring is gaussian with a radius or sigma of 5, rotating grows the image to fit. 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 of node_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), node installs.js and node report.js.