head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs Botpress
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars, 1,999 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Botpress has 14,973 stars, 2,297 forks, 52 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 173% (40,882 vs 14,973 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; Botpress is written in TypeScript under MIT. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, Botpress 15%. Botpress 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
| Lightpanda | Botpress | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 15K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 2.3K |
| 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 Botpress if
- You want the Botpress feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Botpress 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 Botpress
Botpress Cloud Botpress is the ultimate platform for building next generation chatbots and assistants powered by OpenAI. Start building incredible assistants for your projects or businesses at lightning speed. Getting started • Cloud • Documentation • Integrations • Plugins This Repository This repository contains: Integrations – all public integrations on the Botpress Hub maintained by Botpress Devtools – all Botpress Cloud dev tools (CLI, SDK, API Client) Bots some example of bots " as code " made only using the SDK and the CLI Plugins – all plugins on the Botpress Studio (coming soon) Contributing We love…
read the full Botpress overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or Botpress more popular?
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars and Botpress has 14,973. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and Botpress free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Botpress under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and Botpress?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and Botpress 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 Botpress?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (40,882 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Botpress if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.