head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs brightdata-mcp
Lightpanda has 35,452 GitHub stars, 1,684 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped today. brightdata-mcp has 2,654 stars, 329 forks, 40 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 1,236% (35,452 vs 2,654 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; brightdata-mcp is written in JavaScript under MIT. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, brightdata-mcp 12%. Lightpanda was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (browser-automation), 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
| Lightpanda | brightdata-mcp | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 35K | ★ 2.7K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 329 |
| 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 brightdata-mcp if
- You want the brightdata-mcp feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and brightdata-mcp 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 brightdata-mcp
brightdata mcp is a Model Context Protocol server in JavaScript under the MIT license. It exposes web search, page scraping, structured data extraction, browser automation, LLM response collection, and package registry data to AI agents, coding agents, chat assistants, and other MCP compatible clients. It lives in the MCP ecosystem.
read the full brightdata-mcp overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or brightdata-mcp more popular?
Lightpanda has 35,452 GitHub stars and brightdata-mcp has 2,654. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and brightdata-mcp free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and brightdata-mcp under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and brightdata-mcp?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and brightdata-mcp in JavaScript. 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 brightdata-mcp?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (35,452 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose brightdata-mcp if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.