head to head · open source
Harper vs HackBrowserData
Harper has 17,365 GitHub stars, 794 forks, 896 open issues and last shipped yesterday. HackBrowserData has 14,661 stars, 1,809 forks, 33 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Harper leads on adoption by 18% (17,365 vs 14,661 stars). Harper is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; HackBrowserData is written in Go under MIT. Harper has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, HackBrowserData 12%. 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
| Harper | HackBrowserData | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 15K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 794 | ⑂ 1.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Harper if
- You weight community size — 17K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick HackBrowserData if
- You want the HackBrowserData feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and HackBrowserData fits your workflow better
About Harper
Harper Harper is an English grammar checker designed to be just right. I created it after years of dealing with the shortcomings of the competition. Grammarly was too expensive and too overbearing. Its suggestions lacked context, and were often just plain wrong . Not to mention: it's a privacy nightmare. Everything you write with Grammarly is sent to their servers. Their privacy policy claims they don't sell the data, but that doesn't mean they don't use it to train large language models and god knows what else. Not only that, but the round trip time of the network request makes revising your work all the more…
read the full Harper overview →
About HackBrowserData
HackBrowserData HackBrowserData is a command line tool for decrypting and exporting browser data (passwords, history, cookies, bookmarks, credit cards, download history, localStorage, sessionStorage and extensions) from the browser. It supports the most popular Chromium based browsers and Firefox on Windows, macOS and Linux, plus Safari on macOS. It can also decrypt data across machines and operating systems : export the master keys on the origin host, then decrypt a copy of the data offline on any other host — even for a browser that the analyst host's OS cannot run (see Cross host decryption). Disclaimer: This…
read the full HackBrowserData overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Harper or HackBrowserData more popular?
Harper has 17,365 GitHub stars and HackBrowserData has 14,661. Harper has the larger community by that measure.
Are Harper and HackBrowserData free?
Both are open source. Harper is licensed under Apache-2.0 and HackBrowserData under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Harper and HackBrowserData?
Harper is written in Rust and HackBrowserData 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, Harper or HackBrowserData?
Choose Harper if you want the larger community (17,365 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose HackBrowserData if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.