head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs ActivePieces
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars, 1,999 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ActivePieces has 25,343 stars, 4,422 forks, 573 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 61% (40,882 vs 25,343 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; ActivePieces is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, ActivePieces 17%. ActivePieces 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
| Lightpanda | ActivePieces | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 25K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Zig | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 4.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Lightpanda if
- You weight community size — 41K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Zig
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick ActivePieces if
- You want the ActivePieces feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and ActivePieces fits your workflow better
About Lightpanda
Lightpanda Browser The headless browser built from scratch for AI agents and automation. Not a Chromium fork. Not a WebKit patch. A new browser, written in Zig.   Benchmarks Requesting 933 real web pages over the network on a AWS EC2 m5.large instance. See benchmark details. Quick start Install Package Managers Latest nightly from Homebrew: Latest nightly from Arch Linux User Repository: Download from the nightly builds You can download the last binary from the nightly builds for Linux and MacOS for both x86 64 and aarch64. For Linux Verify the binary before running anything: Linux aarch64 is also available…
read the full Lightpanda overview →
About ActivePieces
An open source replacement for Zapier Documentation 🌪️ Create a Piece 🖉 Deploy 🔥 Join Discord 🤯 Welcome to Activepieces All in one AI automation designed to be extensible through a type safe pieces framework written in TypeScript . When you contribute pieces to Activepieces they become automatically available as MCP servers that you can use with LLMs through Claude Desktop, Cursor or Windsurf! 🔥 Why Activepieces is Different: 💖 Loved by Everyone : Intuitive interface and great experience for both technical and non technical users with a quick learning curve. 🌐 Open Ecosystem: All pieces are open source…
read the full ActivePieces overview →
More in Data & Analytics
Related comparisons
More Data Extraction & Web Scraping projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Data Extraction & Web Scraping field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or ActivePieces more popular?
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars and ActivePieces has 25,343. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and ActivePieces free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0, and ActivePieces has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and ActivePieces?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and ActivePieces 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, Lightpanda or ActivePieces?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (40,882 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose ActivePieces if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.