head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs fredy
Lightpanda has 41,263 GitHub stars, 2,035 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. fredy has 1,617 stars, 260 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 2,452% (41,263 vs 1,617 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; fredy is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, fredy 16%. fredy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (puppeteer), 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 | fredy | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Zig | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 260 |
| 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 fredy if
- You want the fredy feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and fredy 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 fredy
Website Demo Quick Start Docs Fredy 🏡 Your Self Hosted Real Estate Finder for Europe Fredy watches 24 real estate portals across 🇩🇪 🇦🇹 🇨🇭 🇪🇸 🇮🇹 🇵🇹 for you (e.g. Immoscout, Kleinanzeigen etc), drops duplicates across platforms, and notifies you via Slack, Telegram, Email, ntfy, Discord and more the moment a new listing appears. Searches are managed from a Web UI, and you never see the same listing twice. On top of the listing itself, Fredy answers the three questions a portal will not: What would this cost me? Enter your income, living costs and savings once, and every listing is measured against…
read the full fredy overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or fredy more popular?
Lightpanda has 41,263 GitHub stars and fredy has 1,617. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and fredy free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and fredy under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and fredy?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and fredy in JavaScript. 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 fredy?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (41,263 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose fredy if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.