head to head · open source
serenity vs fingerprintjs
serenity has 33,840 GitHub stars, 3,541 forks, 739 open issues and last shipped yesterday. fingerprintjs has 28,466 stars, 2,621 forks, 19 open issues and last shipped yesterday. serenity leads on adoption by 19% (33,840 vs 28,466 stars). serenity is written in C++ under BSD-2-Clause; fingerprintjs is written in TypeScript under MIT. serenity has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, fingerprintjs 9%. fingerprintjs 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.
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Side by side
| serenity | fingerprintjs | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 34K | ★ 28K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C++ | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 2.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick serenity if
- You weight community size — 34K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick fingerprintjs if
- You want the fingerprintjs feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and fingerprintjs fits your workflow better
About serenity
SerenityOS is a graphical Unix like operating system built for 64 bit x86, Arm, and RISC V computers. It is written in C++ and released under the BSD 2 Clause license, and it lives in the open source operating system ecosystem alongside other hobbyist and research kernels. The project describes itself as a love letter to 1990s user interfaces paired with a custom Unix like core, aiming for a marriage between the aesthetic of late 1990s productivity software and the power user accessibility of late 2000s Unix systems.
read the full serenity overview →
About fingerprintjs
FingerprintJS is an open source, client side browser fingerprinting library that queries browser attributes and computes a hashed visitor identifier from them, aimed at web developers and engineering teams that need to recognise returning browsers without depending on cookies or local storage.
read the full fingerprintjs overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is serenity or fingerprintjs more popular?
serenity has 33,840 GitHub stars and fingerprintjs has 28,466. serenity has the larger community by that measure.
Are serenity and fingerprintjs free?
Both are open source. serenity is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and fingerprintjs under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between serenity and fingerprintjs?
serenity is written in C++ and fingerprintjs in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, serenity or fingerprintjs?
Choose serenity if you want the larger community (33,840 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose fingerprintjs if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.