head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs daml
Lightpanda has 35,418 GitHub stars, 1,681 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped today. daml has 917 stars, 263 forks, 753 open issues and last shipped today. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 3,762% (35,418 vs 917 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; daml is written in Haskell under Apache-2.0. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, daml 29%. 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 | daml | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 35K | ★ 917 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Zig | Haskell |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 263 |
| 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 daml if
- You want the daml feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Haskell
- You evaluated both and daml 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 daml
See full README at sdk/README.md
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or daml more popular?
Lightpanda has 35,418 GitHub stars and daml has 917. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and daml free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and daml under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and daml?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and daml in Haskell. 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 daml?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (35,418 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose daml if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.