head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs camofox-browser
Lightpanda has 35,452 GitHub stars, 1,684 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped today. camofox-browser has 11,105 stars, 1,098 forks, 66 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 219% (35,452 vs 11,105 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Lightpanda | camofox-browser | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 35K | ★ 11K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 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 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 camofox-browser
camofox browser is an anti detection browser server for AI agents, built in JavaScript and distributed under the MIT license. It wraps Camoufox, a Firefox fork that performs fingerprint spoofing at the C++ implementation level, and exposes that engine through a REST API designed for programmatic agents rather than human users. The project lives in the Node.js ecosystem and is published by the team behind jo, a personal AI agent. It is positioned as a drop in replacement for Puppeteer and Playwright when those tools are blocked.
read the full camofox-browser overview →
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 camofox-browser more popular?
Lightpanda has 35,452 GitHub stars and camofox-browser has 11,105. 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 (35,452 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.