head to head · open source
Ladybird vs Harper
Ladybird has 66,807 GitHub stars, 3,194 forks, 535 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Harper has 17,365 stars, 794 forks, 896 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Ladybird leads on adoption by 285% (66,807 vs 17,365 stars). Ladybird is written in C++ under BSD-2-Clause; Harper is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Ladybird has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, Harper 5%. 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
| Ladybird | Harper | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 67K | ★ 17K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C++ | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 794 |
| 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 Harper if
- You want the Harper feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Harper 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 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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ladybird or Harper more popular?
Ladybird has 66,807 GitHub stars and Harper has 17,365. Ladybird has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ladybird and Harper free?
Both are open source. Ladybird is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and Harper under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ladybird and Harper?
Ladybird is written in C++ and Harper 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 Harper?
Choose Ladybird if you want the larger community (66,807 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose Harper if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.