head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs CloakBrowser
Lightpanda has 41,174 GitHub stars, 2,024 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. CloakBrowser has 32,712 stars, 2,720 forks, 164 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 26% (41,174 vs 32,712 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; CloakBrowser is written in Python under MIT. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, CloakBrowser 8%. Lightpanda was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (browser-automation, playwright), 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
| Lightpanda | CloakBrowser | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 33K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 2.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Lightpanda if
- You weight community size — 41K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Zig
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick CloakBrowser if
- You want the CloakBrowser feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and CloakBrowser fits your workflow better
About Lightpanda
Lightpanda Browser The headless browser built from scratch for AI agents and automation. Not a Chromium fork. Not a WebKit patch. A new browser, written in Zig.   Benchmarks Requesting 933 real web pages over the network on a AWS EC2 m5.large instance. See benchmark details. Quick start Install Package Managers Latest nightly from Homebrew: Latest nightly from Arch Linux User Repository: Download from the nightly builds You can download the last binary from the nightly builds for Linux and MacOS for both x86 64 and aarch64. For Linux Verify the binary before running anything: Linux aarch64 is also available…
read the full Lightpanda overview →
About CloakBrowser
Stealth Chromium that passes every bot detection test. Not a patched config. Not a JS injection. A real Chromium binary with fingerprints modified at the C++ source level. Antibot systems score it as a normal browser — because it is a normal browser. Cloudflare Turnstile — 3 live tests passing (headed mode, macOS) Drop in Playwright/Puppeteer replacement for Python and JavaScript. Same API, same code — just swap the import. 3 lines of code, 30 seconds to unblock. 87 source level C++ patches — canvas, WebGL, audio, fonts, GPU, screen, WebRTC, network timing, automation signals, CDP input behavior humanize=True —…
read the full CloakBrowser overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or CloakBrowser more popular?
Lightpanda has 41,174 GitHub stars and CloakBrowser has 32,712. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and CloakBrowser free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and CloakBrowser under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and CloakBrowser?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and CloakBrowser 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, Lightpanda or CloakBrowser?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (41,174 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose CloakBrowser if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.