head to head · open source
Harper vs HackBrowserData
Harper has 15,469 GitHub stars, 632 forks, 896 open issues and last shipped yesterday. HackBrowserData has 14,534 stars, 1,810 forks, 33 open issues and last shipped 17 days ago. Harper leads on adoption by 6% (15,469 vs 14,534 stars). Harper is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; HackBrowserData is written in Go under MIT. Harper has attracted 4% 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 | ★ 15K | ★ 15K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 632 | ⑂ 1.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Harper if
- You weight community size — 15K 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 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 →
About HackBrowserData
HackBrowserData is an MIT licensed command line tool written in Go that decrypts and exports browser data — passwords, cookies, history, bookmarks, credit cards, downloads, extensions, localStorage and sessionStorage — from Chromium based browsers, Firefox, and Safari for security research on Windows, macOS and Linux.
read the full HackBrowserData overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Harper or HackBrowserData more popular?
Harper has 15,469 GitHub stars and HackBrowserData has 14,534. 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 (15,469 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose HackBrowserData if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.