head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs dots
Lightpanda has 42,051 GitHub stars, 2,117 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped today. dots has 32,530 stars, 4,757 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 29% (42,051 vs 32,530 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; dots is written in Python under MIT. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, dots 15%. Lightpanda was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (browser-automation), 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 | dots | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 42K | ★ 33K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-15 | 2026-11-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.1K | ⑂ 4.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Lightpanda if
- You weight community size — 42K 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 dots if
- You want the dots feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and dots 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 dots
dots Every AI agent is a model and a browser. You can swap the model with one flag. The browser is what the website sees. Windows, in PowerShell: Linux: Then open The conversation on the left, the browser on the right, live. It all comes down to the browser When a web agent fails, the model is rarely why. The page never loaded, a challenge appeared, the login expired, the click did not land. All of that happens in the browser, before the model gets to think. So dots is built around one: A real Firefox engine, patched in C++. The fingerprint is decided inside the engine, not painted over with JavaScript that a…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or dots more popular?
Lightpanda has 42,051 GitHub stars and dots has 32,530. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and dots free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and dots under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and dots?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and dots in Python. 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 dots?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (42,051 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose dots if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.