head to head · open source
obscura vs chromium
obscura has 30,141 GitHub stars, 2,279 forks, 134 open issues and last shipped yesterday. chromium has 25,223 stars, 9,398 forks, 28 open issues and last shipped yesterday. obscura leads on adoption by 19% (30,141 vs 25,223 stars). obscura is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; chromium is written in various languages under BSD-3-Clause. obscura has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, chromium 37%. chromium 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| obscura | chromium | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 25K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Rust | — |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 9.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick obscura if
- You weight community size — 30K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick chromium if
- You want the chromium feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- You evaluated both and chromium fits your workflow better
About obscura
Obscura The open source headless browser for AI agents and web scraping. Lightweight, stealthy, and built in Rust. Native rendering is here. No Chromium required. 🎉 Capture screenshots, screencast live pages, and export PDFs directly with Obscura. Obscura is a headless browser engine written in Rust, built for web scraping and AI agent automation. It runs real JavaScript via V8, supports the Chrome DevTools Protocol, and acts as a drop in replacement for headless Chrome with Puppeteer and Playwright. Why Obscura over headless Chrome? Obscura inspired Cloudflare Kitesurf’s first prototype Cloudflare began by…
read the full obscura overview →
About chromium
Chromium Chromium is an open source browser project that aims to build a safer, faster, and more stable way for all users to experience the web. The project's web site is To check out the source code locally, don't use git clone ! Instead, follow the instructions on how to get the code. Documentation in the source is rooted in docs/README.md. Learn how to Get Around the Chromium Source Code Directory Structure. For historical reasons, there are some small top level directories. Now the guidance is that new top level directories are for product (e.g. Chrome, Android WebView, Ash). Even if these products have…
read the full chromium overview →
More in Productivity & Utilities
Related comparisons
More Browsers & Extensions projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Browsers & Extensions field.
Frequently asked questions
Is obscura or chromium more popular?
obscura has 30,141 GitHub stars and chromium has 25,223. obscura has the larger community by that measure.
Are obscura and chromium free?
Both are open source. obscura is licensed under Apache-2.0 and chromium under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between obscura and chromium?
obscura is written in Rust and chromium 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, obscura or chromium?
Choose obscura if you want the larger community (30,141 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose chromium if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.