Meet the best alternative to Uploadcare
How does Upload compare with Uploadcare? Which platform is better for file & image uploading? What is the best Uploadcare alternative? We'll answer all these questions, and will show you why Upload is a great alternative to Uploadcare.
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Looking for Uploadcare alternatives?
Uploadcare was founded in Russia, in 2011, by Igor Debatur (CEO) and Anton Chernyakov (VP of Product), with Dmitry Mukhin (CTO) and Alex Karpinsky (Chief Algorithms Officer) joining the founding team later in 2013. The company originally focused on developers by offering a service that promised to reduce development time when implementing file uploads, but this shifted in 2016 to helping larger businesses reduce their traffic costs. In 2019 Uploadcare moved to Canada, where they continue to focus on blue chips within the Western market.
Upload and Uploadcare both started with the same goal: to reduce development time for companies requiring file upload functionality in their websites and apps. Uploadcare has since gone upmarket and now focuses on larger organisations.
By contrast, Upload continues to focus on developers. Our mindset has always been to put the developer first. We continue to do this by prioritising new features, simplifying our docs, streamlining our dashboard's UX, focusing on performance, and reducing the size of our SDKs.
Here's why you should consider Upload:
Reason #1
Powerful, folder-based storage.
Uploadcare uses flat storage: all your files are stored in a single root folder. This can lead to unmanageable media libraries.
Upload uses hierarchical storage: this means you can create an unlimited number of folders and sub-folders for your files.
Wait! It gets better: each folder gets its own file permissions and storage layer. Folders can optionally be mapped to existing S3 buckets or HTTP sources, giving you full external storage support.
Upload gives you complete control.
Reason #2
Lightweight developer SDKs.
Our file upload widget is smaller — and doesn't require jQuery — which means it takes less time to load:
Uploadcare's file upload widget is 87KB.
Upload's file upload widget is 33KB.
Our upload widget is 37% the size of Uploadcare's.
Did you know: webpage speed is a ranking factor for Google.
import { Upload } from "upload-js";
// Call once per app.const upload = Upload({ apiKey: "free" });
// <input type="file" onchange="onChange(event)" />async function onChange(event) { const [ file ] = event.target.files; const { fileUrl } = await upload.uploadFile(file); console.log(`File uploaded: ${fileUrl}`);}Reason #3
Quick to integrate.
With Upload, you get clear and simple documentation. Our READMEs show you exactly what to do, and how to do it.
You can have Upload integrated in approx. 60 seconds using the following live code snippets:
Reason #4
Advanced traffic management.
Being able to quickly add file uploads to your website is great.
However, what about preventing abuse? How many file uploads per IP address is acceptable? What about the total size of those files? What about the size of each of those files? What about blocking users and IP addresses?
Uploadcare doesn't allow you to control all of these settings. By contrast, Upload allows you to control each and every one, with its state-of-the-art traffic management system, which is seamlessly integrated into the Upload Dashboard.
Reason #5
Cheaper caching of raw files
When it comes to serving files from external servers, both Upload and Uploadcare support a "reverse proxy" feature:
Uploadcare's reverse proxy feature is more expensive, however, as it saves each raw upstream file to your Uploadcare account.
Upload, by contrast, does not duplicate your original files: you only pay for the storage of transformed images.
In short: Uploadcare charges an additional unit for each raw file, whereas Upload does not.
Reason #6
Support for custom code execution.
Upload is built for developers, and our support for custom code execution is testament to that.
Both Uploadcare and Upload support image transformations, but only Upload supports file transformations using custom code.
This allows you to grow with the Upload platform, giving you the ability to build transformations that can invoke native binaries like TensorFlow, FFmpeg and ImageMagick.
Reason #7
Expert help from skilled developers.
Need help? Talk directly to our development team using the instant chat widget!
We also love using Slack — if you're on the Plus Plan or higher, you'll get access to a private Slack channel where you can communicate directly with the team.
Reason #8
We're much cheaper, too*
While Uploadcare offers a free plan, its paid plans are far more expensive than Upload's:
Middle plan: Upload's middle plan is $35pm whereas the equivalent Uploadcare plan is $134pm.
Highest plan: Upload's highest plan is $195pm whereas the equivalent Uploadcare plan is $665pm.
* Uploadcare uses variable pricing rather than fixed plans. We've compared the two by taking Upload's middle and highest plans, and then getting a quote for the equivalent plan from Uploadcare's website. (Prices taken on 24th May 2022.)
Uploadcare vs Upload
Let's see how Upload compares as an Uploadcare alternative:
  |   | |
|---|---|---|
| Highest plan* The highest plan the vendor lists on their pricing page*. Both offer a custom plan with effectively unlimited usage, available on request. * For vendors using variable pricing (like Uploadcare) the price shown is the quote given by the vendor's pricing page for the equivalent limits offered by the Upload plan. | $665/month* | $195/month |
| Middle plan* The middle plan offered by this vendor*. * For vendors using variable pricing (like Uploadcare) the price shown is the quote given by the vendor's pricing page for the equivalent limits offered by the Upload plan. | $134/month* | $35/month |
| Lowest plan The lowest tier offered by this vendor. | Free | $7/month |
| Price of storage For Upload, this is calculated by dividing the middle plan's price by 3 (to account for storage, bandwidth and transformation quotas), and then dividing that number by the plan's storage quota in GBs. For vendors that use variable pricing, like Uploadcare, this is the range of prices that vendor offers for cloud storage, per GB. | $0.12 - $0.40 per GB | $0.23 per GB |
| Invite team members Invite multiple team members to manage your account. | ||
| Removable branding The ability to remove the vendor's branding from UI components, such as Upload Widgets, that your users will see. | Paid Plans Only | |
| Cloud-based file storage Store and host files with the vendor using their cloud storage. | ||
| URL-based file transformations Run URL-based file transformations to transform your files in real-time. | ||
| Perma-caching Serve transformed files (e.g. resized images & thumbnails) to users via a perma-cache to avoid processing delays on all subsequent requests, forever. | ||
| Worldwide CDN A content delivery network (CDN) serves your files from many locations around the world, ensuring minimal download latency for your users. | ||
| Folders Create folders and sub-folders for your files, e.g. to organise content by user, project, time, etc. | ||
| Image optimization Optimize images, e.g. by producing small WEBP thumbnails from larger JPEG photographs. | ||
| Image conversion Convert images to other formats, e.g. WEBP, PNG and JPG. | ||
| Image resizing Resize images in real-time via the URL. | ||
| Image cropping Crop images in real-time by manually providing crop dimensions. | ||
| Image cropping with AI Crop images in real-time using automatic AI-based smart cropping. | ||
| WEBP support The ability to read WEBP images, and to save images as WEBP. | ||
| Extract image metadata (EXIF) The ability to extract the EXIF metadata embedded within JPEGs. | ||
| Fast support Get ultra-fast responses to your technical questions and support tickets. | - | |
| Support via Slack Friendly and professional support over Slack. | - | |
| Support via email Friendly and professional support with an expert team, via email. | ||
| Usage monitoring Monitor your storage, processing & bandwidth usage over time using our beautiful dashboards. | ||
| SSL (HTTPS) All uploads, downloads and file transformations run over HTTPS, keeping you and your users safe. | ||
| Expiring links The ability to expire files after a period of time has elapsed. | ||
| Expiring links with messages After a file expires, the ability to redirect users to an alternative URL, or to display a custom error message. | ||
| Max file size management The ability to set limits on the size of the files your users can upload. | One Limit (Account-Wide) | Many Limits (Rule-Based) |
| Rate limit management The ability to rate-limit uploads using custom dimensions and frequencies. For example: "100 uploads per day per IP" or "5 video uploads per hour per user" | ||
| Advanced traffic management The ability to limit upload traffic using custom dimensions and frequencies. For example: "1 GB per day per IP" or "100 MB of images per hour per user" | ||
| IP blacklist management The ability to reject upload attempts based on custom dimensions, including the source IP address. | ||
| Authenticated URLs Upload supports federated access control, meaning you can authenticate & authorize access to your files via your application's own security system. | ||
| Proxy support The ability to transform files (e.g. resize images) that are hosted on existing websites, without needing to move the files to the vendor's storage. | ||
| Custom CNAME Make Upload your own by using a custom CNAME: your users will never know we're here. | ||
| Video transcoding Convert uploaded videos to streamable formats. | Coming Soon | |
| Custom S3 bucket Bring your own AWS S3 bucket to store your files. | ||
| REST API Upload, list and delete file via a REST API. | ||
| Core JavaScript SDK The ability to build a custom file upload UI, using a minimal amount of JavaScript code from the vendor. | ||
| Core JavaScript SDK (size) The size of the core JavaScript SDK (smaller is better). | 7KB | 6KB |
| File upload widget Add a file upload UI to your website using a drop-in widget. | ||
| File upload widget (size) The size of the file upload widget (smaller is better). | 87KB | 33KB |
| Compare Compare the pricing for yourself: we've provided a link to the price page for each option. | See pricing | See pricing |
Ready to try Upload?
We believe we've built a superior product to Uploadcare. We think you'll agree. Create your account today to play with our intuitive dashboards and advanced features, and then decide for yourself:
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Storage & CDN, built-in.
Upload provides cloud-based file storage, file transformations, and a worldwide CDN, all fully integrated.
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