head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs brightdata-mcp
Lightpanda has 41,174 GitHub stars, 2,024 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. brightdata-mcp has 2,709 stars, 337 forks, 40 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 1,420% (41,174 vs 2,709 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Lightpanda | brightdata-mcp | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 2.7K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 337 |
| 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 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 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 brightdata-mcp
Bright Data MCP Web search, page scraping, structured data extraction, and browser automation for AI agents and LLMs over the Model Context Protocol. Works with AI agents, coding agents, chat assistants, and any MCP compatible client. Quick Start • Pricing • Use Cases • Tools • Agent Skills • Docs • Support Free tier: 5,000 requests per month. No credit card required. Renews monthly. Overview The Bright Data MCP server gives AI agents real time access to public web data. It exposes 69 tools covering: Web search — Google, Bing, and Yandex results as structured data Page scraping — any URL as Markdown or HTML…
read the full brightdata-mcp 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 brightdata-mcp more popular?
Lightpanda has 41,174 GitHub stars and brightdata-mcp has 2,709. 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 (41,174 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.