Verdict
A cloud service for storing, resizing, optimizing and delivering images via API and CDN, aimed at developers building web and mobile apps that handle images at scale.
A free, self-hosted GPLv3 DAM used by French public-sector, cultural and broadcast institutions with in-house technical staff, now being sunset by its vendor in favor of a paid successor, Phrasea.
A developer-first file upload and CDN/media-processing API for apps, pitched as a lighter, faster-to-integrate alternative to Cloudinary for teams that don't need its full DAM/video/AI stack.
An open-licence, self-hosted DAM for teams with in-house server admin capability, trading a free licence for the time to run upgrades, tune dependencies and troubleshoot it themselves.
Price published
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Billed on
Storage ($5 / 100,000 images stored / month), delivery ($1 / 100,000 images delivered / month), and transformations (first 5,000 unique transformations/month free, then $0.50 / 1,000 unique transformations/month). A unique transformation is billed per distinct parameter combination (e.g. same image at 100x100 and 200x200 counts as two). Storage/delivery charges apply only to images hosted in Cloudflare Images; transforming externally-hosted images is billed only under transformations.
No licence fee; implementation and support services may be paid
Operations, traffic and storage, with published overage rates
Self-hosted: no licence fee. Hosted: a user ceiling per tier
Deployment
Cloud
On-premise
Cloud
Cloud, On-premise
Free plan
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Free trial
No
No
No
No
Transparency index
Not checked
90%
70%
60%
Most common complaint
Not checked
The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 2026
The free tier is stated as personal use only
The free route is genuinely free of licence fees but moves hosting, upgrades and support onto you