Show HN: Img-src – $5/month image CDN with on-the-fly transforms via URL params

by taehun • 6 months ago

3 5 6 months ago

taehun3• 6 months ago

Hey HN,

After years of building web services on AWS, I got tired of setting up the same image optimization stack over and over: CloudFront + Lambda@Edge + S3, IAM policies, cache invalidation — 2-3 hours of config per project, every single time.

All I wanted was: upload an image, get a URL, add ?w=800 to resize it. Why did that require stitching together 3 AWS services?

So I built img-src (https://img-src.io).

Upload an image, get a global CDN URL. Transform on the fly with query params:

- https://img-src.io/i/user/photo.jpg ← original - https://img-src.io/i/user/photo.jpg?w=800 ← resize - https://img-src.io/i/user/photo.webp?q=85 ← format + quality - https://img-src.io/i/user/photo.avif?w=400&h=400&fit=cover

No CloudFront. No Lambda. No S3 bucket config.

How it works: - Upload via dashboard or REST API - Images stored on Cloudflare R2 (zero egress fees = unlimited bandwidth) - CDN Worker serves from 200+ edge locations - Rust/libvips container handles transcoding (WebP, AVIF, JPEG, PNG)

Tech stack: - Frontend: React 19 + Vite + TailwindCSS - Backend: TypeScript + Hono on Cloudflare Workers - CDN: Cloudflare Workers + R2 + KV - Transcoder: Rust + Axum + libvips (Docker container) - Auth: Clerk (JWT/JWKS) - Docs: Mintlify (https://docs.img-src.io)

Pricing: - Free: 10GB storage, 1K transforms/month, unlimited bandwidth - Pro: $5/month — 50GB, 10K transforms, unlimited bandwidth

The unlimited bandwidth is possible because R2 has zero egress costs. Pro plan infrastructure cost is ~$0.85/user/month.

I built this solo, pair-programming with Claude Code ~3 hours/day. My role was mostly testing and providing feedback on the generated code.

API docs: https://docs.img-src.io OpenAPI spec available for SDK generation (TypeScript SDK in progress).

Would love feedback from HN, especially on: - Pricing — is $5/month the right price point vs Cloudinary ($99+), ImageKit ($49)? - Missing features — what would make you switch from your current setup? - API design — anything you'd change? - Agent workflows — if your AI agent needed to handle images, what would the ideal integration look like?

eduardogarza2• 6 months ago

Cloudflare Images does this and it places the transformations in its CDN as well. What do I get from this that I don't get from them?

taehun3• 6 months ago

Good question. The key difference is in the transformation workflow.

Cloudflare Images requires you to pre-define "variants" in the dashboard before you can use them. Need a 800x600 crop? Go to the dashboard, create a variant, name it, then reference it in your URL like imagedelivery.net/<account_hash>/<image_id>/my-variant. Every time you need a new size or quality combination, you're back in the dashboard. It's a configure → register → use flow.

img-src.io lets you specify transformations directly in the URL query string — no pre-registration needed. img-src.io/i/john/photo.webp?w=800&h=600&q=85&fit=cover just works on the first request. You can freely combine 20+ parameters (blur, sharpen, rotate, grayscale, etc.) without touching any dashboard. It's an upload → use flow.

We do offer presets (?p:thumbnail) which work similarly to Cloudflare's variants — named parameter sets you can reuse across URLs. The difference is that presets are optional and managed via API, not a prerequisite. You can go ad-hoc when prototyping and introduce presets later when your transformation needs stabilize, rather than being forced to define every combination upfront in a dashboard.

eduardogarza2• 6 months ago

Cloudflare Images dot not require you to pre-define variants ... That's incorrect. I have multiple sites using it in production where I generate any size variant on the fly. It works exactly the same as you're stating that yours does.

https://developers.cloudflare.com/images/transform-images

Show HN: Img-src – $5/month image CDN with on-the-fly transforms via URL params

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