Software Alternatives & Startups

ImageOptim API VS Purlo.dev

Compare ImageOptim API VS Purlo.dev and see what are their differences

ImageOptim API

Web service for image compression

Rating
0 reviews
Purlo.dev

A simple image API — resize, convert (WebP/AVIF), compress and strip EXIF/GPS metadata in one call.

Rating
0 reviews
Pricing
Freemium £5 / Monthly (Starter — 5,000 images/mo)

Which is more popular?

Based on our record, ImageOptim API seems to be more popular. It has been mentioned 3 times since March 2021.

social mentions
3 vs 0
Image Optimisation popularity
81% vs 19%
alternatives listed
59 vs 8

Base details

Website, pricing, platforms and company facts side by side.

ImageOptim API
Purlo.dev
Website imageoptim.com purlo.dev
Pricing —
Freemium £5 / Monthly (Starter — 5,000 images/mo) Official pricing
Platforms —
SaaS Cloud REST API Web Node JS +2
Company — Startup from the United Kingdom · 1 - 9 employees · 2026
Listed in

About ImageOptim API and Purlo.dev

In their own words, as submitted to SaaSHub.

ImageOptim API
Purlo.dev

No description of ImageOptim API yet.

Purlo is a cheap, simple image-processing API for developers who need to clean up user uploads — without running their own pipeline or paying enterprise-platform prices. One endpoint, POST /v1/image, does the whole job in a single call: Resize — fit to width/height, never upscales Convert — WebP,...

Read more about Purlo.dev

Features and specs

What each product offers, as listed by its team.

ImageOptim API 5 features
Purlo.dev 8 features
  • Efficient Compression
    The ImageOptim API provides high-quality image compression, which reduces file sizes without significantly affecting visual quality. This results in faster loading times for websites and applications.
  • Support for Multiple Formats
    The API supports a variety of image formats including JPEG, PNG, and GIF, allowing for broad use across different platforms and projects.
  • Optimization Options
    Users can customize the optimization process, adjusting quality settings and choosing between lossless and lossy compression according to their needs.
  • Integration Capability
    The API can be easily integrated into build systems and CI/CD pipelines, which helps automate the optimization process for developers.
  • Preservation of Metadata
    The API provides the option to preserve or strip metadata from images, offering flexibility according to privacy and SEO considerations.

Possible disadvantages

  • Cost
    The ImageOptim API is a paid service, which may not be cost-effective for smaller projects or those with limited budgets.
  • Dependency on External Service
    Using an external API means that your service is dependent on the uptime and reliability of ImageOptim, which could be a risk if their service experiences downtime.
  • Limited Control Over Process
    While the API offers some customization, users might have limited control compared to local optimization tools where they can deeply tweak optimizations and algorithms.
  • Privacy Concerns
    Sending images to an external service for processing could raise privacy concerns, especially with sensitive or proprietary images that might require local processing for security reasons.
  • Operations
    Resize, convert, compress, strip metadata — chained in one call
  • Output formats
    WebP, AVIF, JPEG, PNG
  • Metadata Handling
    Strips EXIF/GPS, keeps the ICC colour profile
  • Input
    Multipart upload or URL fetch (SSRF-guarded)
  • Image storage
    None — stateless, images deleted after processing
  • Authentication
    API key (Bearer token)
  • Free Tier
    1,000 images/month, no card
  • Client library
    Zero-dependency @purlo/cli (npm)

Category popularity

How often each product is chosen within a category, 0–100% relative to the other.

Score bands 0–20 21–40 41–50 51–60 61–100
ImageOptim API
Purlo.dev
81% 81%
19% 19%
0% 0%
100% 100%
100% 100%
0% 0%
63% 63%
37% 37%

Questions & Answers

As answered by people managing ImageOptim API and Purlo.dev.

What makes your product unique?

Purlo.dev's answer:

Purlo does one thing deliberately well: a single API call that resizes, converts (WebP/AVIF/JPEG/PNG), compresses and strips EXIF/GPS metadata — chained in one request, in a fixed, documented order. It's stateless by design — images are processed in memory and discarded immediately, never stored — and it keeps the ICC colour profile when it strips metadata, so privacy-sensitive data is removed without shifting your colours. It's not a media platform or a CDN; it's the focused "clean up an upload" step, built and priced to stay simple.

Why should a person choose your product over its competitors?

Purlo.dev's answer:

If you just need to clean and resize user uploads, the big platforms (Cloudinary, imgix, ImageKit) are more than the job asks for — more features, more concepts, and usage-based pricing to model. Purlo is cheaper and simpler: flat pricing from £5/month, a generous free tier (1,000 images/month, no card), one endpoint to learn, and a ten-minute integration. The privacy angle comes for free — images are never stored and EXIF/GPS is stripped by default. Choose Purlo when you want the upload-cleaning job done simply and affordably, not a whole media platform.

How would you describe the primary audience of your product?

Purlo.dev's answer:

Solo developers and small teams building apps that accept image uploads — SaaS products, marketplaces, social and content apps — who need to resize, convert and strip metadata from those uploads without running their own image pipeline or paying enterprise-platform prices. Developers who value a fast, well-documented integration and a clear privacy story.

Which are the primary technologies used for building your product?

Purlo.dev's answer:

Node.js (Express) with sharp (libvips) for image processing, SQLite (better-sqlite3) for accounts/keys/usage, Stripe for billing, Resend for transactional email, and Docker behind nginx with Let's Encrypt TLS.

What's the story behind your product?

Purlo.dev's answer:

The problem behind Purlo is one I've watched repeat for well over a decade. Since working at the BBC around 2010, the single most common reason I've seen sites turn slow is simple: people upload full-size, unoptimised images straight off a phone or camera and wonder why their pages crawl. Even today, page weight is one of the first things I check for a new client — it's one of the most common mistakes on the web, and one of the easiest to fix. Almost every app that takes image uploads needs to resize them, convert to a web-friendly format, compress, and strip the EXIF/GPS metadata those files carry — yet most teams rebuild that same pipeline every time, security corners (resource limits, SSRF protection) included. Purlo packages that whole job into one simple, affordable API, so a developer can fix it in ten minutes instead of maintaining their own. Built and run by Axiom Testing Ltd.

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Recommendations tracked on public social media and blogs since March 2021.

ImageOptim API 3 mentions
Purlo.dev 0 mentions

Tracking Purlo.dev since Sep 2026.

Alternatives to ImageOptim API and Purlo.dev

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