head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs ArchiveBox
Lightpanda has 41,313 GitHub stars, 2,039 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ArchiveBox has 28,958 stars, 1,631 forks, 159 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 43% (41,313 vs 28,958 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; ArchiveBox is written in Python under MIT. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, ArchiveBox 6%. Lightpanda was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Lightpanda | ArchiveBox | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 29K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-05 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Lightpanda if
- You weight community size — 41K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Zig
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick ArchiveBox if
- You want the ArchiveBox feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and ArchiveBox fits your workflow better
About Lightpanda
Lightpanda Browser The headless browser built from scratch for AI agents and automation. Not a Chromium fork. Not a WebKit patch. A new browser, written in Zig.   Benchmarks Requesting 933 real web pages over the network on a AWS EC2 m5.large instance. See benchmark details. Quick start Install Package Managers Latest nightly from Homebrew: Latest nightly from Arch Linux User Repository: Download from the nightly builds You can download the last binary from the nightly builds for Linux and MacOS for both x86 64 and aarch64. For Linux Verify the binary before running anything: Linux aarch64 is also available…
read the full Lightpanda overview →
About ArchiveBox
ArchiveBox Open source self hosted web archiving. ▶️ Quickstart Demo GitHub Documentation Info & Motivation Community ArchiveBox is a self hosted app that lets you preserve content from websites in a variety of formats. We aim to make your data immediately useful, and kept in formats that other programs can read directly. As output, we save standard HTML, PNG, PDF, TXT, JSON, WARC, SQLite, all guaranteed to be readable for decades to come. ArchiveBox also has a CLI, REST API, and webhooks so you can set up integrations with other services. Without active preservation effort, everything on the internet eventually…
read the full ArchiveBox overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or ArchiveBox more popular?
Lightpanda has 41,313 GitHub stars and ArchiveBox has 28,958. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and ArchiveBox free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and ArchiveBox under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and ArchiveBox?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and ArchiveBox in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Lightpanda or ArchiveBox?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (41,313 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose ArchiveBox if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.