head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs figranium
Lightpanda has 35,452 GitHub stars, 1,684 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped today. figranium has 734 stars, 44 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 4,730% (35,452 vs 734 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; figranium is written in TypeScript under GPL-3.0. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, figranium 6%. Lightpanda was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (browser-automation, headless, playwright), 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 | figranium | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 35K | ★ 734 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Zig | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 44 |
| 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 figranium if
- You want the figranium feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and figranium 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 figranium
Figranium is an open source, deterministic browser automation platform that lets teams build visual browser tasks in a block based editor and call them as HTTP APIs — aimed at developers, data engineers, and agent builders who scrape or automate modern web pages without paying usage credits or handing data to a third party host.
read the full figranium overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or figranium more popular?
Lightpanda has 35,452 GitHub stars and figranium has 734. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and figranium free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and figranium under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and figranium?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and figranium in TypeScript. 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 figranium?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (35,452 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose figranium if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.