head to head · open source
BrowserOS vs thorium
BrowserOS has 13,718 GitHub stars, 1,459 forks, 82 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. thorium has 7,515 stars, 283 forks, 140 open issues and last shipped 28 days ago. BrowserOS leads on adoption by 83% (13,718 vs 7,515 stars). BrowserOS is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; thorium is written in C++ under BSD-3-Clause. BrowserOS has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, thorium 4%. BrowserOS was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (chromium), 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
| BrowserOS | thorium | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 14K | ★ 7.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | TypeScript | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-08-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 283 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick BrowserOS if
- You weight community size — 14K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick thorium if
- You want the thorium feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and thorium fits your workflow better
About BrowserOS
BrowserOS is an open source agentic browser, written in TypeScript under AGPL 3.0, that puts AI agents inside a real Chromium browser on the user's own machine so they can work with real logged in accounts, and it is aimed at people who already use an agent harness such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or any MCP agent and want that agent to handle web tasks instead of a sandbox.
read the full BrowserOS overview →
About thorium
Thorium is a BSD 3 Clause licensed Chromium fork, written in C++ and named after radioactive element No. 90, that ships optimised Linux builds here while Windows, macOS, Android and Raspberry Pi builds live in companion repositories.
read the full thorium overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is BrowserOS or thorium more popular?
BrowserOS has 13,718 GitHub stars and thorium has 7,515. BrowserOS has the larger community by that measure.
Are BrowserOS and thorium free?
Both are open source. BrowserOS is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and thorium under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between BrowserOS and thorium?
BrowserOS is written in TypeScript and thorium in C++. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, BrowserOS or thorium?
Choose BrowserOS if you want the larger community (13,718 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose thorium if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.