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Purlo.dev VS ImageOptim API

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

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)
Alternatives Is it good?
ImageOptim API

Web service for image compression

Rating
0 reviews
Alternatives Is it good?
Modelence
Create production-ready applications with zero code sponsored

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
0 vs 3
APIs popularity
100% vs 0%
alternatives listed
8 vs 59

Base details

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

Purlo.dev
ImageOptim API
Website purlo.dev imageoptim.com
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
Image Processing Developer Tools APIs Developer APIs Image Optimisation +2
Image Optimisation Image Editing Marketing Platform Image Processing +1

About Purlo.dev and ImageOptim API

In their own words, as submitted to SaaSHub.

Purlo.dev
ImageOptim API

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

No description of ImageOptim API yet.

Features and specs

What each product offers, as listed by its team.

Purlo.dev 8 features
ImageOptim API 5 features
  • 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)
  • 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.

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
Purlo.dev
ImageOptim API
100% 100%
APIs
0% 0%
19% 19%
Image Optimisation
81% 81%
37% 37%
Image Processing
63% 63%
0% 0%
Image Editing
100% 100%

Questions & Answers

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

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.

Purlo.dev 0 mentions
ImageOptim API 3 mentions

Tracking Purlo.dev since Sep 2026.

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