head to head · open source
Ladybird vs opal
Ladybird has 66,807 GitHub stars, 3,194 forks, 535 open issues and last shipped yesterday. opal has 4,930 stars, 338 forks, 152 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Ladybird leads on adoption by 1,255% (66,807 vs 4,930 stars). Ladybird is written in C++ under BSD-2-Clause; opal is written in Ruby under MIT. Ladybird has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, opal 7%. 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 | opal | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 67K | ★ 4.9K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C++ | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 338 |
| 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 opal if
- You want the opal feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and opal 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 opal
Opal Opal is a Ruby to JavaScript source to source compiler, shipping with an implementation of the Ruby corelib and stdlib. Write Ruby, run it anywhere JavaScript runs — the browser, Node.js, Deno, Bun, QuickJS. Why Opal A real Ruby implementation. Opal ships its own corelib and stdlib and is validated against [ruby/spec][ruby spec], the same suite CRuby uses. A JavaScript host imposes limits — those are catalogued in Unsupported Features. Source to source, no runtime interpreter. Ruby compiles to plain JavaScript ahead of time, so there is no VM to download and no interpreter loop at runtime. Two way…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ladybird or opal more popular?
Ladybird has 66,807 GitHub stars and opal has 4,930. Ladybird has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ladybird and opal free?
Both are open source. Ladybird is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and opal under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ladybird and opal?
Ladybird is written in C++ and opal in Ruby. 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 opal?
Choose Ladybird if you want the larger community (66,807 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose opal if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.