| Vendor | Cloudinary | ImageKit Private Limited (India), with US subsidiary ImageKit Inc |
|---|
| HQ | USA (San Jose, California); main R&D in Petah Tikva, Israel | India (New Delhi); US entity in Newark, Delaware |
|---|
| Founded | 2012 | 2016 |
|---|
| Ownership | independent, privately held (founder-led; secondary investments by Bessemer, Salesforce Ventures, Blackstone Growth) | independent, privately held (no external funding round disclosed) |
|---|
| Target market | Enterprise | SMB to mid-market (self-serve plans); Enterprise plans for SSO, governance and custom limits |
|---|
| Hosting regions | US, EU, ap | US, Canada, EU, in, sg, Australia |
|---|
| Pricing model | Assets: Free tier or quote-only Enterprise; Image & Video APIs: public credit-based tiers | Media Processing + DAM: Free, Lite $9/mo, Pro $89/mo plus usage overage; Enterprise quote-only; separate DAM-only plans |
|---|
| Public pricing | No | Yes |
|---|
| Certifications | SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, ISO14001 | ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type 2 |
|---|
| Analyst coverage | Gartner MQ DAM Platforms 2024: Visionary · Gartner MQ DAM Platforms 2025: Visionary · IDC MarketScape Intelligent DAM 2024: Leader | Not public |
|---|
| Official MCP server | Yes5 servers - Asset Management, Environment Config, Structured Metadata, Analysis, MediaFlows; remote OAuth or local npm | Yes3 hosted remote servers - DAM, Admin (OAuth) and DevTools (public) |
|---|
| API base URL | https://api.cloudinary.com/v1_1/{cloud_name}/{action} (api-eu / api-ap for EU, AP) | https://api.imagekit.io/v1/… (management); https://upload.imagekit.io/api/v1|v2/files/upload |
|---|
| Authentication | Basic auth, API key, OAuth 2.0 authorization code, OAuth 2.0 PKCE | Basic auth, API key, JWT, OAuth 2.0 PKCE |
|---|
| Token lifetime | OAuth: access 5 min, refresh 3 months (single-use); upload signatures 1 h | API keys: no expiry (rotate with 0 h to 7 d grace); client upload signature/JWT ≤ 1 h |
|---|
| Rate limit | Admin API 500/h (Free) to 5,000/h, custom on Enterprise; HTTP 420; Upload API unlimited | Burst + sustained per endpoint, HTTP 429; ~40 reads/s, 5-20 writes/s advised; Upload API unlimited |
|---|
| Pagination | cursor (next_cursor + max_results, max 100 or 500 per method) | offset (skip/limit, max 1,000) on file listing; cursor on tag listing |
|---|
| Webhooks (API) | API- and UI-managed triggers, ~28 event types, HMAC-SHA1 / Ed25519 signed, 3 retries | Dashboard or API, 15 event types, Standard Webhooks HMAC-SHA256, max 3 endpoints |
|---|
| API spec | OpenAPI 3.0.3 / 3.1.0: 12 schemas on GitHub + 3 in docs (15 files in specs/) | OpenAPI 3.1.0 (1 file, 60 operations), Apache-2.0 |
|---|
| Official SDKs | Node, Python, PHP, Java, Ruby, .NET, Go, Dart, JS/React/Vue/Angular, iOS, Android, Flutter | Node.js/TS, Python, Go, Java, Ruby, .NET, PHP, JS, React, Vue, Angular, Next.js, Astro, iOS, Android |
|---|