head to head · open source
Ladybird vs extism
Ladybird has 66,807 GitHub stars, 3,194 forks, 535 open issues and last shipped yesterday. extism has 5,823 stars, 167 forks, 54 open issues and last shipped 25 days ago. Ladybird leads on adoption by 1,047% (66,807 vs 5,823 stars). Ladybird is written in C++ under BSD-2-Clause; extism is written in Rust under BSD-3-Clause. Ladybird has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, extism 3%. Ladybird 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
| Ladybird | extism | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 67K | ★ 5.8K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | C++ | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 167 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Ladybird if
- You weight community size — 67K 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 extism if
- You want the extism feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and extism fits your workflow better
About Ladybird
Ladybird Ladybird is a truly independent web browser, using a novel engine based on web standards. [!IMPORTANT] Ladybird is in a pre alpha state, and only suitable for use by developers Features We aim to build a complete, usable browser for the modern web. Ladybird uses a multi process architecture with a main UI process, several WebContent renderer processes, an ImageDecoder process, and a RequestServer process. Image decoding and network connections are done out of process to be more robust against malicious content. Each tab has its own renderer process, which is sandboxed from the rest of the system. At the…
read the full Ladybird overview →
About extism
Overview Extism is a lightweight framework for building with WebAssembly (Wasm). It supports running Wasm code on servers, the edge, CLIs, IoT, browsers and everything in between. Extism is designed to be "universal" in that it supports a common interface, no matter where it runs. Note: One of the primary use cases for Extism is building extensible software & plugins . You want to be able to execute arbitrary, untrusted code from your users? Extism makes this safe and practical to do. Additionally, Extism adds some extra utilities on top of standard Wasm runtimes. For example, we support persistent memory/module…
read the full extism overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ladybird or extism more popular?
Ladybird has 66,807 GitHub stars and extism has 5,823. Ladybird has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ladybird and extism free?
Both are open source. Ladybird is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and extism under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ladybird and extism?
Ladybird is written in C++ and extism in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Ladybird or extism?
Choose Ladybird if you want the larger community (66,807 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose extism if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.