head to head · open source
lighthouse vs licensee
lighthouse has 31,096 GitHub stars, 9,790 forks, 470 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. licensee has 923 stars, 350 forks, 5 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. lighthouse leads on adoption by 3,269% (31,096 vs 923 stars). lighthouse is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0; licensee is written in Ruby under MIT. lighthouse has attracted 31% as many forks as stars, licensee 38%. 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| lighthouse | licensee | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 923 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-13 | 2026-11-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.8K | ⑂ 350 |
| 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 licensee if
- You want the licensee feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and licensee fits your workflow better
About lighthouse
Lighthouse Lighthouse analyzes web apps and web pages, collecting modern performance metrics and insights on developer best practices. Using Lighthouse Using Lighthouse in Chrome DevTools Using the Chrome extension Using the Node CLI CLI options Using the Node module Viewing a report Online Viewer Docs & Recipes Developing Lighthouse Setup Run Tests Docs Associated Products and Projects Lighthouse Integrations in Web Perf services Lighthouse Integrations in non Web Perf services Plugins Related projects FAQ How does Lighthouse work? Can I configure the lighthouse run? How does Lighthouse use network throttling…
read the full lighthouse overview →
About licensee
Licensee A Ruby Gem to detect under what license a project is distributed. The problem You've got an open source project. How do you know what you can and can't do with the software? You've got a bunch of open source projects, how do you know what their licenses are? You've got a project with a license file, but which license is it? Has it been modified? The solution Licensee automates the process of reading LICENSE files and compares their contents to known licenses using several strategies (which we call "Matchers"). It attempts to determine a project's license in the following order: If the license file has…
read the full licensee overview →
More in Business Software
Related comparisons
More Compliance & Risk Management projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Compliance & Risk Management field.
Frequently asked questions
Is lighthouse or licensee more popular?
lighthouse has 31,096 GitHub stars and licensee has 923. lighthouse has the larger community by that measure.
Are lighthouse and licensee free?
Both are open source. lighthouse is licensed under Apache-2.0 and licensee under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lighthouse and licensee?
lighthouse is written in JavaScript and licensee 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, lighthouse or licensee?
Choose lighthouse if you want the larger community (31,096 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose licensee if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.