Design
Free and open-source Cloudinary alternatives
Cloudinary (Image and video upload, transformation and delivery API) is a commercial product. These 2 tools do the same job and are free to use or to self-host.
Short answer: the best free alternatives to Cloudinary are imgproxy and Thumbor. Self-hosting is free; you pay only for the server (a small VPS is about $4–6/mo). Licenses and prices checked 2026-10-01.
Fast on-the-fly image resizing server; Pro adds paid features.
Open source (Apache-2.0) ·★ 11k GitHub stars · last commit 2026-10-06 · ▲ 95 upvotes on DevHunt · details
Smart image service with face-aware cropping and filters.
Open source (MIT) ·★ 11k GitHub stars · last commit 2026-10-04 · details
Want paid options too? See all Cloudinary alternatives or the full free alternatives list.
FAQ
Is there a free alternative to Cloudinary?+
Yes. imgproxy and Thumbor do the same job for free; imgproxy and Thumbor are open source.
What is the best open-source alternative to Cloudinary?+
imgproxy is the most starred on GitHub (11k stars). Fast on-the-fly image resizing server; Pro adds paid features.
Open source: OSI-approved license. Free to self-host: the code is public and free to run yourself, with limits in the license.