head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs firecrawl-mcp-server
Lightpanda has 41,174 GitHub stars, 2,024 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. firecrawl-mcp-server has 7,761 stars, 927 forks, 136 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 431% (41,174 vs 7,761 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; firecrawl-mcp-server is written in JavaScript under MIT. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, firecrawl-mcp-server 12%. Lightpanda 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
| Lightpanda | firecrawl-mcp-server | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 7.8K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 927 |
| 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 firecrawl-mcp-server if
- You want the firecrawl-mcp-server feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and firecrawl-mcp-server 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 firecrawl-mcp-server
Firecrawl MCP Server A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that brings Firecrawl to MCP compatible AI agents — search, scrape, and interact with the live web for clean, agent ready context. Big thanks to @vrknetha, @knacklabs for the initial implementation! Features Search the web and get full page content Search an index built for coding agents: GitHub issues, merged pull requests, READMEs, and docs Scrape any URL into clean, structured data Interact with pages — click, navigate, and operate Deep research with autonomous agent Automatic retries and rate limiting Cloud and self hosted support SSE support Play…
read the full firecrawl-mcp-server overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or firecrawl-mcp-server more popular?
Lightpanda has 41,174 GitHub stars and firecrawl-mcp-server has 7,761. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and firecrawl-mcp-server free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and firecrawl-mcp-server under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and firecrawl-mcp-server?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and firecrawl-mcp-server in JavaScript. 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 firecrawl-mcp-server?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (41,174 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose firecrawl-mcp-server if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.