head to head · open source
serenity vs Brave
serenity has 33,938 GitHub stars, 3,488 forks, 739 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Brave has 24,079 stars, 3,263 forks, 10,752 open issues and last shipped yesterday. serenity leads on adoption by 41% (33,938 vs 24,079 stars). serenity is written in C++ under BSD-2-Clause; Brave is written in various languages under MPL-2.0. serenity has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, Brave 14%. Brave was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (browser), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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
| serenity | Brave | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 34K | ★ 24K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | C++ | — |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 3.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick serenity if
- You weight community size — 34K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Brave if
- You want the Brave feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- You evaluated both and Brave fits your workflow better
About serenity
SerenityOS Graphical Unix like operating system for 64 bit x86, Arm, and RISC V computers. FAQ Documentation Build Instructions About SerenityOS is a love letter to '90s user interfaces with a custom Unix like core. It flatters with sincerity by stealing beautiful ideas from various other systems. Roughly speaking, the goal is a marriage between the aesthetic of late 1990s productivity software and the power user accessibility of late 2000s \ nix. This is a system by us, for us, based on the things we like. You can watch videos of the system being developed on YouTube: Andreas Kling's channel Linus Groh's…
read the full serenity overview →
About Brave
Brave Browser This repository is not needed for building the browser and only holds issues, releases and the wiki. The source code and contributions are at You can visit our website to get the latest stable release. Resources Issues: Bug reports and feature requests for the Brave Browser. Releases: Releases of Brave Browser hosted on GitHub. See Brave Release Schedule for more information. Wiki: Documentation for developers, administrators, and power users. User facing documentation is available at the Brave help center. Documentation and guides: Additional technical information, primarily for developers…
read the full Brave overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is serenity or Brave more popular?
serenity has 33,938 GitHub stars and Brave has 24,079. serenity has the larger community by that measure.
Are serenity and Brave free?
Both are open source. serenity is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and Brave under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between serenity and Brave?
serenity is written in C++ and Brave in various languages. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, serenity or Brave?
Choose serenity if you want the larger community (33,938 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose Brave if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.