head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs BrowserKitten
Lightpanda has 41,487 GitHub stars, 2,053 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. BrowserKitten has 2,381 stars, 10 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 1,642% (41,487 vs 2,381 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; BrowserKitten is written in JavaScript under MIT. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, BrowserKitten 0%. 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 | BrowserKitten | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 2.4K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-06 | 2026-11-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.1K | ⑂ 10 |
| 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 BrowserKitten if
- You want the BrowserKitten feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and BrowserKitten 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 BrowserKitten
Browser Kitten An agent for the browser you already use. Read signed in pages, take action, create files, and follow up locally. English · 简体中文 Quick start · Configuration · Documentation · Current limits · Contribute · Issues Browser Kitten is an MIT licensed Chrome MV3 extension with an agent in the side panel. It works with your existing browser session and keeps conversations, workspace files, and follow up tasks on this computer. Model and other provider requests use the services you configure. Current source version: 1.2.0 · Load unpacked · No build step for installation. What you can do See the actual…
read the full BrowserKitten overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or BrowserKitten more popular?
Lightpanda has 41,487 GitHub stars and BrowserKitten has 2,381. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and BrowserKitten free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and BrowserKitten under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and BrowserKitten?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and BrowserKitten 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 BrowserKitten?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (41,487 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose BrowserKitten if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.