head to head · open source
lighthouse vs opa
lighthouse has 30,785 GitHub stars, 9,765 forks, 470 open issues and last shipped yesterday. opa has 12,244 stars, 1,685 forks, 310 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lighthouse leads on adoption by 151% (30,785 vs 12,244 stars). lighthouse is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0; opa is written in Go under Apache-2.0. lighthouse has attracted 32% as many forks as stars, opa 14%. 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 | opa | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 12K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.8K | ⑂ 1.7K |
| 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 opa if
- You want the opa feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and opa 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 opa
Open Policy Agent (OPA) is an open source, general purpose policy engine that enables unified, context aware policy enforcement across the entire stack. It lives in the cloud native ecosystem as a graduated project in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation landscape, and it is written in Go under the Apache 2.0 license. Policy is expressed declaratively in the Rego language, and the project ships alongside a CLI, an HTTP REST API, a Go SDK, and editor tooling rather than as a single binary alone. The repository has been active for roughly eleven years, with 12,234 stars, 1,679 forks, and a last push dated 15 Septe…
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Frequently asked questions
Is lighthouse or opa more popular?
lighthouse has 30,785 GitHub stars and opa has 12,244. lighthouse has the larger community by that measure.
Are lighthouse and opa free?
Both are open source. lighthouse is licensed under Apache-2.0 and opa under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lighthouse and opa?
lighthouse is written in JavaScript and opa in Go. 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 opa?
Choose lighthouse if you want the larger community (30,785 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose opa if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.