head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs fredy
Lightpanda has 35,452 GitHub stars, 1,684 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped today. fredy has 1,520 stars, 232 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 2,232% (35,452 vs 1,520 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 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 (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 | ★ 35K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Zig | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 232 |
| 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 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 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 fredy
Fredy is a self hosted real estate finder for Europe that watches 24 property portals, removes duplicate listings across platforms, and pushes each new apartment or house to Slack, Telegram, email, ntfy or Discord, built for anyone hunting a place to live in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Italy or Portugal.
read the full fredy overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or fredy more popular?
Lightpanda has 35,452 GitHub stars and fredy has 1,520. 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 (35,452 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.