head to head · open source
BrowserOS vs thorium
BrowserOS has 14,251 GitHub stars, 1,531 forks, 82 open issues and last shipped yesterday. thorium has 7,627 stars, 299 forks, 140 open issues and last shipped 25 days ago. BrowserOS leads on adoption by 87% (14,251 vs 7,627 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 | ★ 7.6K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | TypeScript | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 299 |
| 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
Website · Docs · Enterprise Free · Open source · Everything runs on your machine A second browser, just for your AI agents. Import your logins from Chrome in one click, connect Claude Code, Codex, or any MCP agent, and hand off your web tasks. Agents run in parallel in their own tabs. You watch live, or replay any session like a video. BrowserOS neo is not a Chrome replacement. It is a secondary browser that sits next to Chrome, made friendly to agents. Get started 1. Install BrowserOS neo Prefer a direct download? Grab it for macOS or Windows. 2. Import from Chrome One click brings over your logins, bookmarks…
read the full BrowserOS overview →
About thorium
Thorium Chromium fork for linux named after radioactive element No. 90. Windows/MacOS/RasPi/Android/Other builds see below. Always built with the latest LTS version of Chromium. Intended to behave like and have the featureset of Google Chrome, with differences/patches/enhancements listed below. Compiler optimizations such as LTO, CFlag, LDFlag, LLVM Loop, and PGO, to make it FAST. :boom: In addition, we release builds tailored to different CPUs with different SIMD instructions, for even more execution speed. We offer SSE3, SSE4, AVX, and AVX2 builds, named as such in the Releases. If you are unsure which one to…
read the full thorium overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is BrowserOS or thorium more popular?
BrowserOS has 14,251 GitHub stars and thorium has 7,627. 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 (14,251 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.