head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs kitesurf
Lightpanda has 42,051 GitHub stars, 2,117 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped today. kitesurf has 1,328 stars, 59 forks, 35 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 3,066% (42,051 vs 1,328 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; kitesurf is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, kitesurf 4%. Lightpanda was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (browser-automation), 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 | kitesurf | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 42K | ★ 1.3K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Zig | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-15 | 2026-11-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.1K | ⑂ 59 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Lightpanda if
- You weight community size — 42K 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 kitesurf if
- You want the kitesurf feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and kitesurf 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 kitesurf
Kitesurf Kitesurf is an experimental browser engine that runs on Cloudflare Workers. It parses HTML, applies CSS, runs page JavaScript, and renders screenshots without Chrome or a browser container. Kitesurf speaks the Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP), so you can use it with CDP clients such as Puppeteer. [!IMPORTANT] Kitesurf requires Cloudflare Dynamic Workers to create isolated workers for pages. Dynamic Workers are part of the Workers Paid plan. Local development uses wrangler dev . A Cloudflare Workers Paid plan is required to run Kitesurf on Cloudflare. Requirements Bazelisk, installed as bazel . Bazel…
read the full kitesurf overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or kitesurf more popular?
Lightpanda has 42,051 GitHub stars and kitesurf has 1,328. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and kitesurf free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and kitesurf under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and kitesurf?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and kitesurf 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 kitesurf?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (42,051 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose kitesurf if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.