head to head · open source
stagehand vs katana
stagehand has 24,322 GitHub stars, 1,685 forks, 376 open issues and last shipped yesterday. katana has 17,518 stars, 1,183 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. stagehand leads on adoption by 39% (24,322 vs 17,518 stars). stagehand is written in TypeScript under MIT; katana is written in Go under MIT. stagehand has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, katana 7%. stagehand 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
| stagehand | katana | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 24K | ★ 18K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick stagehand if
- You weight community size — 24K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick katana if
- You want the katana feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and katana fits your workflow better
About stagehand
Stagehand is the MIT licensed SDK for extracting data and interacting with any site on the web, available in TypeScript, Python, and Go, and aimed at developers building AI agents that need to drive a browser the way a person does rather than at engineers writing test suites.
read the full stagehand overview →
About katana
Katana is an open source, MIT licensed crawling and spidering framework written in Go, built for security engineers and automation pipelines that need to map web applications at scale rather than explore them by hand.
read the full katana overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is stagehand or katana more popular?
stagehand has 24,322 GitHub stars and katana has 17,518. stagehand has the larger community by that measure.
Are stagehand and katana free?
Both are open source. stagehand is licensed under MIT and katana under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between stagehand and katana?
stagehand is written in TypeScript and katana 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, stagehand or katana?
Choose stagehand if you want the larger community (24,322 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose katana if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.