head to head · open source
Automa vs local-deep-research
Automa has 21,624 GitHub stars, 2,340 forks, 377 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. local-deep-research has 9,099 stars, 821 forks, 889 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Automa leads on adoption by 138% (21,624 vs 9,099 stars). Automa is written in Vue under a custom or non-standard licence; local-deep-research is written in Python under MIT. Automa has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, local-deep-research 9%. local-deep-research 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
| Automa | local-deep-research | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 9.1K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | Vue | Python |
| Last push | 2026-03-02 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 821 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Automa if
- You weight community size — 22K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Vue
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick local-deep-research if
- You want the local-deep-research feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and local-deep-research fits your workflow better
About Automa
Automa browser extension. Automate browser by connect blocks. Vue project. Chrome and Firefox ecosystem. Problem: repeat browser tasks take time. User make workflow with blocks. No code write. Workflows do form fill, repetitive task, screenshot, scrape website data. Can schedule when automation execute. Marketplace share and download workflow. Automa Chrome Extension Builder make standalone Chrome extension from Automa workflow. Project lives as browser extension, not hosted automation service. The project also lists Chrome and Firefox extension downloads.
read the full Automa overview →
About local-deep-research
Local Deep Research is an MIT licensed, Python based AI research assistant that performs deep, agentic research with proper citations across any local or cloud LLM and more than ten search engines, built for researchers, developers, and privacy conscious self hosters who want both the workload and the data to stay on hardware they control.
read the full local-deep-research overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Automa or local-deep-research more popular?
Automa has 21,624 GitHub stars and local-deep-research has 9,099. Automa has the larger community by that measure.
Are Automa and local-deep-research free?
Both are open source. Automa has no licence declared in this registry, and local-deep-research is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Automa and local-deep-research?
Automa is written in Vue and local-deep-research 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, Automa or local-deep-research?
Choose Automa if you want the larger community (21,624 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose local-deep-research if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.