head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs btw
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars, 1,999 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. btw has 1,254 stars, 101 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 3,160% (40,882 vs 1,254 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; btw is written in JavaScript under GPL-3.0. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, btw 8%. Lightpanda 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Lightpanda | btw | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 1.3K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Zig | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-08-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 101 |
| 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 btw if
- You want the btw feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and btw 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 btw
btw btw is an open source personal website builder. You can sign up and use btw without installing anything. You can also use the open source version to self host. Demo blogs published using btw: deeptichopra.com siddg.com Table of contents Getting Started Pre requisites Installation Development Community Coming next License Getting started These instructions will help you to get a copy of the project up and running on your local machine Pre requisites Install the latest version of Docker, Docker compose on your system Working postgres instance SMTP credentials (Ex: from mailgun) Installation Set ADMIN EMAIL and…
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 btw more popular?
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars and btw has 1,254. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and btw free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and btw under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and btw?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and btw 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 btw?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (40,882 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose btw if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.