head to head · open source
CloakBrowser vs playwright-go
CloakBrowser has 31,660 GitHub stars, 2,629 forks, 232 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. playwright-go has 3,510 stars, 246 forks, 4 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. CloakBrowser leads on adoption by 802% (31,660 vs 3,510 stars). CloakBrowser is written in Python under MIT; playwright-go is written in Go under MIT. CloakBrowser has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, playwright-go 7%. CloakBrowser was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (browser-automation, chromium, 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
| CloakBrowser | playwright-go | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 3.5K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-23 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 246 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick CloakBrowser if
- You weight community size — 32K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick playwright-go if
- You want the playwright-go feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and playwright-go fits your workflow better
About CloakBrowser
CloakBrowser is a stealth Chromium build for Python and JavaScript teams that need browser automation to survive bot detection systems, aimed at scraping and AI agent engineers who want to replace Playwright or Puppeteer without rewriting their code.
read the full CloakBrowser overview →
About playwright-go
Playwright for Go is a browser automation library, distributed as the Go module github.com/mxschmitt/playwright go under the MIT licence, that drives Chromium, Firefox and WebKit through a single API and is aimed at Go developers who need programmatic control of real browsers.
read the full playwright-go overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is CloakBrowser or playwright-go more popular?
CloakBrowser has 31,660 GitHub stars and playwright-go has 3,510. CloakBrowser has the larger community by that measure.
Are CloakBrowser and playwright-go free?
Both are open source. CloakBrowser is licensed under MIT and playwright-go under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between CloakBrowser and playwright-go?
CloakBrowser is written in Python and playwright-go in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, CloakBrowser or playwright-go?
Choose CloakBrowser if you want the larger community (31,660 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose playwright-go if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.