Automattic/node-canvas

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_license

Adoption not part of the score

10690 stars · 1195 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

node-canvas is a Cairo-backed implementation of the Web Canvas API for Node.js, enabling 2D drawing, text rendering, and image manipulation server-side. It supports exporting to PNG, JPEG, and PDF buffers/streams and works across macOS, Linux, and Windows.

Use cases

• generate images server-side in node
• render charts to png in a node backend
• draw text on images with nodejs
• create pdf files from canvas drawings
• implement canvas api without a browser
• process and composite images in node

When to choose

• you need the standard Web Canvas API in Node.js
• you want to generate PNG/JPEG/PDF images server-side
• you need prebuilt binaries for common platforms

When to avoid

• you need GPU-accelerated or WebGL rendering
• you are rendering in the browser (use the native Canvas API)
• you need a pure-JavaScript dependency-free solution

Facets

library · maturity active

image-processing graphics pdf image-processing graphics backend developer-tools windows cross-platform canvas-api cairo 2d-graphics server-side-rendering npm nodejs macos linux

Member repositories

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