head to head · open source
lighthouse vs flashlight
lighthouse has 30,785 GitHub stars, 9,765 forks, 470 open issues and last shipped yesterday. flashlight has 1,604 stars, 48 forks, 29 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. lighthouse leads on adoption by 1,819% (30,785 vs 1,604 stars). lighthouse is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0; flashlight is written in TypeScript under MIT. lighthouse has attracted 32% as many forks as stars, flashlight 3%. lighthouse was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (audit), 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
| lighthouse | flashlight | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.8K | ⑂ 48 |
| 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 flashlight if
- You want the flashlight feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and flashlight 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 flashlight
Flashlight is an open source Android mobile performance audit tool written in TypeScript and licensed under MIT. It is positioned as a Lighthouse for Mobile tool, and it gives Android applications a performance score by aggregating different metrics. The project lives in the Android mobile ecosystem and covers native Android apps, React Native apps, and Flutter apps.
read the full flashlight overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lighthouse or flashlight more popular?
lighthouse has 30,785 GitHub stars and flashlight has 1,604. lighthouse has the larger community by that measure.
Are lighthouse and flashlight free?
Both are open source. lighthouse is licensed under Apache-2.0 and flashlight under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lighthouse and flashlight?
lighthouse is written in JavaScript and flashlight 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, lighthouse or flashlight?
Choose lighthouse if you want the larger community (30,785 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose flashlight if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.