head to head · open source
Ladybird vs obscura
Ladybird has 66,807 GitHub stars, 3,194 forks, 535 open issues and last shipped yesterday. obscura has 30,141 stars, 2,279 forks, 134 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Ladybird leads on adoption by 122% (66,807 vs 30,141 stars). Ladybird is written in C++ under BSD-2-Clause; obscura is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Ladybird has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, obscura 8%. 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 | obscura | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 67K | ★ 30K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C++ | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 2.3K |
| 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 obscura if
- You want the obscura 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 obscura 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 obscura
Obscura The open source headless browser for AI agents and web scraping. Lightweight, stealthy, and built in Rust. Native rendering is here. No Chromium required. 🎉 Capture screenshots, screencast live pages, and export PDFs directly with Obscura. Obscura is a headless browser engine written in Rust, built for web scraping and AI agent automation. It runs real JavaScript via V8, supports the Chrome DevTools Protocol, and acts as a drop in replacement for headless Chrome with Puppeteer and Playwright. Why Obscura over headless Chrome? Obscura inspired Cloudflare Kitesurf’s first prototype Cloudflare began by…
read the full obscura overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ladybird or obscura more popular?
Ladybird has 66,807 GitHub stars and obscura has 30,141. Ladybird has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ladybird and obscura free?
Both are open source. Ladybird is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and obscura under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ladybird and obscura?
Ladybird is written in C++ and obscura 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 obscura?
Choose Ladybird if you want the larger community (66,807 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose obscura if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.