head to head · open source
lighthouse vs beacon
lighthouse has 30,788 GitHub stars, 9,765 forks, 470 open issues and last shipped today. beacon has 1,260 stars, 135 forks, 70 open issues and last shipped 19 days ago. lighthouse leads on adoption by 2,343% (30,788 vs 1,260 stars). lighthouse is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0; beacon is written in Elixir under MIT. lighthouse has attracted 32% as many forks as stars, beacon 11%. lighthouse 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
| lighthouse | beacon | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 1.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | Elixir |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-08-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.8K | ⑂ 135 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick lighthouse if
- You weight community size — 31K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick beacon if
- You want the beacon feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Elixir
- You evaluated both and beacon fits your workflow better
About lighthouse
Lighthouse is an open source, automated auditing tool for web applications and web pages. It analyzes a target URL and collects modern performance metrics alongside insights into developer best practices, producing a structured report that scores and explains what it finds. The project lives in the JavaScript ecosystem, is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license, and is maintained under the GoogleChrome organization. It has been developed for roughly eleven years and is published to npm as the lighthouse package.
read the full lighthouse overview →
About beacon
Beacon is an open source content management system built with Phoenix LiveView for Elixir teams that need fast render times on content heavy pages and the SEO performance that depends on them.
read the full beacon overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lighthouse or beacon more popular?
lighthouse has 30,788 GitHub stars and beacon has 1,260. lighthouse has the larger community by that measure.
Are lighthouse and beacon free?
Both are open source. lighthouse is licensed under Apache-2.0 and beacon under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lighthouse and beacon?
lighthouse is written in JavaScript and beacon in Elixir. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, lighthouse or beacon?
Choose lighthouse if you want the larger community (30,788 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose beacon if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.