head to head · open source
lighthouse vs next-terminal
lighthouse has 30,785 GitHub stars, 9,765 forks, 470 open issues and last shipped yesterday. next-terminal has 5,636 stars, 781 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lighthouse leads on adoption by 446% (30,785 vs 5,636 stars). lighthouse is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0; next-terminal is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. lighthouse has attracted 32% as many forks as stars, next-terminal 14%. 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 | next-terminal | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 5.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.8K | ⑂ 781 |
| 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 next-terminal if
- You want the next-terminal feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and next-terminal 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 next-terminal
Next Terminal is a self hosted bastion and session auditing system for enterprise IT teams that need recorded, replayable access to remote machines over RDP, SSH, VNC, Telnet, and HTTP.
read the full next-terminal overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lighthouse or next-terminal more popular?
lighthouse has 30,785 GitHub stars and next-terminal has 5,636. lighthouse has the larger community by that measure.
Are lighthouse and next-terminal free?
Both are open source. lighthouse is licensed under Apache-2.0 and next-terminal under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lighthouse and next-terminal?
lighthouse is written in JavaScript and next-terminal 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 next-terminal?
Choose lighthouse if you want the larger community (30,785 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose next-terminal if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.