head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs cenit
Lightpanda has 35,409 GitHub stars, 1,680 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cenit has 503 stars, 133 forks, 24 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 6,940% (35,409 vs 503 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; cenit is written in Ruby under MIT. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, cenit 26%. 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 | cenit | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 35K | ★ 503 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-07-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 133 |
| 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 cenit if
- You want the cenit feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and cenit 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 cenit
Cenit is a 100% open source integration platform as a service (iPaaS) written in Ruby, built for teams that design integrations, orchestrate data flows, expose APIs, and manage data pipelines across external systems without adopting a closed hosted vendor.
read the full cenit overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or cenit more popular?
Lightpanda has 35,409 GitHub stars and cenit has 503. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and cenit free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and cenit under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and cenit?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and cenit in Ruby. 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 cenit?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (35,409 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose cenit if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.