head to head · open source
Ladybird vs zip.js
Ladybird has 66,807 GitHub stars, 3,194 forks, 535 open issues and last shipped yesterday. zip.js has 3,905 stars, 546 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 12 days ago. Ladybird leads on adoption by 1,611% (66,807 vs 3,905 stars). Ladybird is written in C++ under BSD-2-Clause; zip.js is written in JavaScript under BSD-3-Clause. Ladybird has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, zip.js 14%. 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 | zip.js | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 67K | ★ 3.9K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | C++ | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-22 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 546 |
| 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 zip.js if
- You want the zip.js feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and zip.js 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 zip.js
Introduction zip.js is a JavaScript open source library (BSD 3 Clause license) for compressing and decompressing zip files. It has been designed to handle large amounts of data. It supports notably multi core compression, native compression with compression streams, pluggable compression engines, archives larger than 4GB with Zip64, split zip files, data encryption, incremental writing, and Deflate64 decompression. Demo See Documentation See here for more info: Examples Hello world Run the code on JSFiddle: Hello world with the filesystem API The filesystem API stores the entries in a tree instead of a flat…
read the full zip.js overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ladybird or zip.js more popular?
Ladybird has 66,807 GitHub stars and zip.js has 3,905. Ladybird has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ladybird and zip.js free?
Both are open source. Ladybird is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and zip.js under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ladybird and zip.js?
Ladybird is written in C++ and zip.js in JavaScript. 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 zip.js?
Choose Ladybird if you want the larger community (66,807 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose zip.js if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.