head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs browserless
Lightpanda has 35,452 GitHub stars, 1,684 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped today. browserless has 1,836 stars, 91 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped today. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 1,831% (35,452 vs 1,836 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; browserless is written in JavaScript under MIT. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, browserless 5%. browserless was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (browser, headless, puppeteer), 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 | browserless | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 35K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 91 |
| 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 browserless if
- You want the browserless feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and browserless 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 browserless
Browserless is an MIT licensed JavaScript library that drives headless Chrome and Chromium on top of Puppeteer, giving Node.js applications a production ready API for screenshots, PDFs, and extracted text or HTML.
read the full browserless overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or browserless more popular?
Lightpanda has 35,452 GitHub stars and browserless has 1,836. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and browserless free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and browserless under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and browserless?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and browserless 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 browserless?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (35,452 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose browserless if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.