head to head · open source
serenity vs Helium
serenity has 33,938 GitHub stars, 3,488 forks, 739 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Helium has 22,283 stars, 680 forks, 490 open issues and last shipped yesterday. serenity leads on adoption by 52% (33,938 vs 22,283 stars). serenity is written in C++ under BSD-2-Clause; Helium is written in C++ under GPL-3.0. serenity has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, Helium 3%. serenity 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 | Helium | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 34K | ★ 22K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C++ | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 680 |
| 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 Helium if
- You want the Helium feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and Helium fits your workflow better
About serenity
SerenityOS Graphical Unix like operating system for 64 bit x86, Arm, and RISC V computers. FAQ Documentation Build Instructions About SerenityOS is a love letter to '90s user interfaces with a custom Unix like core. It flatters with sincerity by stealing beautiful ideas from various other systems. Roughly speaking, the goal is a marriage between the aesthetic of late 1990s productivity software and the power user accessibility of late 2000s \ nix. This is a system by us, for us, based on the things we like. You can watch videos of the system being developed on YouTube: Andreas Kling's channel Linus Groh's…
read the full serenity overview →
About Helium
Helium The Chromium based web browser made for people, with love. Privacy first with unbiased ad blocking. No bloat and no noise. helium.computer Downloads [!NOTE] Helium is currently in beta, so unexpected issues may occur. Please report them if they haven't already been reported. The easiest way to download Helium is helium.computer. It'll pick a compatible binary for your platform automatically. The same releases can also be downloaded from source on GitHub: Latest macOS release Latest Linux release Latest Windows release Helium repos All Helium packaging, tooling, services, and components are open source and…
read the full Helium overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is serenity or Helium more popular?
serenity has 33,938 GitHub stars and Helium has 22,283. serenity has the larger community by that measure.
Are serenity and Helium free?
Both are open source. serenity is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and Helium under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between serenity and Helium?
serenity is written in C++ and Helium in C++. 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 Helium?
Choose serenity if you want the larger community (33,938 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose Helium if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.