head to head · open source
ego-lite vs Harper
ego-lite has 16,117 GitHub stars, 844 forks, 169 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Harper has 15,469 stars, 632 forks, 896 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ego-lite leads on adoption by 4% (16,117 vs 15,469 stars). ego-lite is written in JavaScript under MIT; Harper is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. ego-lite has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, Harper 4%. Harper was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| ego-lite | Harper | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 15K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 844 | ⑂ 632 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick ego-lite if
- You weight community size — 16K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Harper if
- You want the Harper feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Harper fits your workflow better
About ego-lite
ego lite is an MIT licensed browser from citrolabs that lets a person and their AI agents drive the same browser in parallel, aimed at developers who want Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or a custom agent CLI to automate real, logged in web pages without surrendering the tabs they are using.
read the full ego-lite overview →
About Harper
Harper is offline, privacy first grammar checker for English. It lives in productivity, browser extension, developer tools, and text editing ecosystem. Project is open source under Apache 2.0. GitHub metadata shows 15373 stars, 627 forks, and 896 open issues. Last push is 2026 09 14. Category is Productivity & Utilities / Browsers & Extensions. It uses Rust for core, WebAssembly for browser loading, language server for editors, JavaScript package for web and Node.js apps. It solves slow, costly, network dependent grammar checking. It replaces Grammarly and LanguageTool as named in README. Grammarly sends writing …
read the full Harper overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is ego-lite or Harper more popular?
ego-lite has 16,117 GitHub stars and Harper has 15,469. ego-lite has the larger community by that measure.
Are ego-lite and Harper free?
Both are open source. ego-lite is licensed under MIT and Harper under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ego-lite and Harper?
ego-lite is written in JavaScript and Harper in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, ego-lite or Harper?
Choose ego-lite if you want the larger community (16,117 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Harper if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.