head to head · open source
Ladybird vs slate
Ladybird has 66,807 GitHub stars, 3,194 forks, 535 open issues and last shipped yesterday. slate has 31,747 stars, 3,306 forks, 653 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. Ladybird leads on adoption by 110% (66,807 vs 31,747 stars). Ladybird is written in C++ under BSD-2-Clause; slate is written in TypeScript under MIT. Ladybird has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, slate 10%. 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Ladybird | slate | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 67K | ★ 32K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C++ | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 3.3K |
| 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 slate if
- You want the slate feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and slate 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 slate
A completely customizable framework for building rich text editors. Why? · Principles · Demo · Examples · Documentation · Contributing! Slate lets you build rich, intuitive editors like those in Medium, Dropbox Paper or Google Docs—which are becoming table stakes for applications on the web—without your codebase getting mired in complexity. It can do this because all of its logic is implemented with a series of plugins, so you aren't ever constrained by what is or isn't in "core". You can think of it like a pluggable implementation of contenteditable built on top of React. It was inspired by libraries like…
read the full slate overview →
More in Productivity & Utilities
Related comparisons
More Browsers & Extensions projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Browsers & Extensions field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Ladybird or slate more popular?
Ladybird has 66,807 GitHub stars and slate has 31,747. Ladybird has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ladybird and slate free?
Both are open source. Ladybird is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and slate under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ladybird and slate?
Ladybird is written in C++ and slate in TypeScript. 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 slate?
Choose Ladybird if you want the larger community (66,807 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose slate if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.