head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs camofox-browser
Lightpanda has 41,174 GitHub stars, 2,024 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped today. camofox-browser has 12,144 stars, 1,228 forks, 66 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 239% (41,174 vs 12,144 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; camofox-browser is written in JavaScript under MIT. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, camofox-browser 10%. Lightpanda was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (browser-automation, playwright, 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 | camofox-browser | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 12K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| 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 camofox-browser if
- You want the camofox-browser feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and camofox-browser 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 camofox-browser
camofox browser Anti detection browser server for AI agents, powered by Camoufox Standing on the mighty shoulders of Camoufox a Firefox fork with fingerprint spoofing at the C++ level. Built by the team behind jo, a personal AI agent that runs half on your Mac, half on a dedicated cloud machine just for you with zero maintenance needed. Available on macOS, Telegram, WhatsApp, and email. Try the beta free Pradeep Elankumaran (@pradeep24) — co founder and technical CEO at Jo. Why AI agents need to browse the real web. Playwright gets blocked. Headless Chrome gets fingerprinted. Stealth plugins become the…
read the full camofox-browser overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or camofox-browser more popular?
Lightpanda has 41,174 GitHub stars and camofox-browser has 12,144. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and camofox-browser free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and camofox-browser under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and camofox-browser?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and camofox-browser 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 camofox-browser?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (41,174 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose camofox-browser if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.