Skia
Hacker ApprovedRanked 3 of 14 graphics libraries by recommenders
A robust, fast graphics library people build on for drawing text and vector shapes. Critics point to CPU-based path and font rendering.
A robust, fast graphics library people build on for drawing text and vector shapes. Critics point to CPU-based path and font rendering.
19 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 14
- criticize it
- 5
- approval share
- 74%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 14 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Solid, widely trusted choice
“Most of the big ones are things like skia, harfbuzz, wgpu - all totally reasonable IMO.”
Comment from 20 Jan 2026 in “Scaling long-running autonomous coding” “It's quite useful for things like skia or piet-gpu/vello”
Comment from 17 Dec 2025 in “No Graphics API” “Skia of course solved this the right way.”
Comment from 7 Jan 2026 in “Math of Vector graphics on GPU, inspired by piet-GPU” - Comment from 1 Jun 2026 in “NPM packages from RedHat have been compromised”
Easy to build and develop
“thank you so much for the kind words. I am very grateful to you and all the other Skia contributors who've made the Skia codebase so easy to build and develop.”
Comment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Compiler-style optimization for drawing via Skia” “relatively easy to build with the Rust bindings”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “C++26 is done ISO C++ standards meeting, Trip Report” Fast, robust GPU vector rendering
“It's a very robust, fast approach to the wholistic problem, at the cost of not being as "clean" of a solution like a pure GPU renderer would be.”
Comment from 7 Jan 2026 in “Math of Vector graphics on GPU, inspired by piet-GPU” “Skia can render vector graphics directly into GPU memory”
Comment from 4 Jan 2026 in “JavaScript engines zoo – Compare every JavaScript engine”
Other graphics libraries people recommend
The four most recommended other graphics libraries, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Three.js | 49 | 11 | 82% | 12 | — | Approved |
| wgpu | 27 | 9 | 75% | 11 | — | Approved |
| SkiaThis page | 14 | 5 | 74% | 8 | — | Approved |
| LVGL | 10 | 2 | 83% | 5 | — | Approved |
| Dawn WebGPU | 9 | 6 | 60% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
20 of the 22 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Skia is at the right level but then you need to maintain two very different graphics APIs in parallel”
“thank you so much for the kind words. I am very grateful to you and all the other Skia contributors who've made the Skia codebase so easy to build and develop.”
“As a former Skia contrib, this is cool as heck to read.”
“Similar for Skia or Sqlite or whatever.”
“CoreGraphics and Skia bring their own glyph caches and metrics”
“hw acceleration and memory pressure behaviors of Skia and Chromium”
“relatively easy to build with the Rust bindings”
“the Skia API is really nice for just drawing some text / other primitives onto the screen”
“both seemed way heavier weight than they ought to be, and even just building Skia was an annoying chore”
“which is good but still utilise CPU for Path rendering”
“you're always paying for Skia's costs with Flutter”
“Most of the big ones are things like skia, harfbuzz, wgpu - all totally reasonable IMO.”
“Our experience with reporting issues in Skia and other such Google libraries has left a bitter impression”
“which is quite impressive if that is single-threaded”
“Skia just renders fonts on the CPU with all kinds of hacks”
“Skia is definitely not a good example at all.”
“It's a very robust, fast approach to the wholistic problem, at the cost of not being as "clean" of a solution like a pure GPU renderer would be.”
“Skia of course solved this the right way.”
“Skia can render vector graphics directly into GPU memory”
“It's quite useful for things like skia or piet-gpu/vello”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.