head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs button-card
Lightpanda has 35,409 GitHub stars, 1,680 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. button-card has 2,496 stars, 280 forks, 31 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 1,319% (35,409 vs 2,496 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; button-card is written in TypeScript under MIT. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, button-card 11%. 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.
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Side by side
| Lightpanda | button-card | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 35K | ★ 2.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 280 |
| 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 button-card if
- You want the button-card feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and button-card 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 button-card
button card is a custom Lovelace card for Home Assistant. It presents entities as configurable buttons and supports many options for appearance, actions, and state display. It lives in the Home Assistant ecosystem, specifically the Lovelace UI, and is distributed as a community custom card with stable and development releases.
read the full button-card overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or button-card more popular?
Lightpanda has 35,409 GitHub stars and button-card has 2,496. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and button-card free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and button-card under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and button-card?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and button-card in TypeScript. 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 button-card?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (35,409 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose button-card if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.