head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs Botpress
Lightpanda has 35,409 GitHub stars, 1,680 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Botpress has 14,920 stars, 2,293 forks, 52 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 137% (35,409 vs 14,920 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 | ★ 35K | ★ 15K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 2.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Lightpanda if
- You weight community size — 35K 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 is a headless browser built from scratch in Zig, designed specifically for AI agents and automation tasks. It is not a fork of Chromium or WebKit but a new implementation targeting performance and efficiency in automated web interactions. It lives in the browser automation ecosystem, competing with tools like Puppeteer and Playwright that typically rely on Chromium based headless modes.
read the full Lightpanda overview →
About Botpress
Botpress is open source hub to build and deploy GPT/LLM agents. It lives in Botpress Cloud ecosystem. Project uses TypeScript, MIT license, npm packages @botpress/cli and @botpress/sdk. Repository contains public integrations, devtools, example bots as code, and plugins for Botpress Studio, marked coming soon.
read the full Botpress overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or Botpress more popular?
Lightpanda has 35,409 GitHub stars and Botpress has 14,920. 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 (35,409 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Botpress if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.