head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs ff-ruyijs
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars, 1,999 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ff-ruyijs has 537 stars, 274 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 7,513% (40,882 vs 537 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; ff-ruyijs is written in C++ under AGPL-3.0. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, ff-ruyijs 51%. 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 | ff-ruyijs | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 537 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Zig | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 274 |
| 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 ff-ruyijs if
- You want the ff-ruyijs 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 ff-ruyijs 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 ff-ruyijs
🦊 ruyiJS Run any site's JavaScript from Python — with the real Firefox engine. A new generation, minimalist browser purpose built for AI driven automation. The authentic Firefox JavaScript engine and networking stack, with no window and no renderer — made for web scraping, JS reverse engineering, data collection, and getting past bot checks. Sponsored by Contributors Install · Features · Verification systems · Examples · FAQ · Contact · LinuxDO · English · 简体中文 ⚠️ Disclaimer: This project is for researching next generation AI browsers. Any form of brute force reverse engineering is strictly rejected. The source…
read the full ff-ruyijs overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or ff-ruyijs more popular?
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars and ff-ruyijs has 537. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and ff-ruyijs free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and ff-ruyijs under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and ff-ruyijs?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and ff-ruyijs 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 ff-ruyijs?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (40,882 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose ff-ruyijs if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.