head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs ESPresense
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars, 1,999 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ESPresense has 1,500 stars, 190 forks, 121 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 2,625% (40,882 vs 1,500 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; ESPresense is written in C under AGPL-3.0. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, ESPresense 13%. 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 | ESPresense | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Zig | C |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 190 |
| 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 ESPresense if
- You want the ESPresense feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and ESPresense 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 ESPresense
ESPresense An ESP32 based presence detection node for use with the Home Assistant mqtt room component or ESPresense companion for indoor positioning Documentation: Building: building. Release Notes: changelog. trigger CI
read the full ESPresense overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or ESPresense more popular?
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars and ESPresense has 1,500. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and ESPresense free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and ESPresense under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and ESPresense?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and ESPresense in C. 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 ESPresense?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (40,882 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose ESPresense if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.