head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs lux
Lightpanda has 41,174 GitHub stars, 2,024 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped today. lux has 31,821 stars, 3,331 forks, 545 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 29% (41,174 vs 31,821 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; lux is written in Go under MIT. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, lux 10%. 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 | lux | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 32K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-03-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 3.3K |
| 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 lux if
- You want the lux feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and lux 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 lux
Lux Let there be Lux! 👾 Lux is a fast and simple video downloader built with Go. Installation Prerequisites Install via go install Homebrew (macOS only) Arch Linux Void Linux Scoop on Windows Chocolatey on Windows Cask on Windows/macOS/Linux Getting Started Download a video Download anything else Download playlist Multiple inputs Resume a download Auto retry Cookies Proxy Multi Thread Short link bilibili Use specified Referrer Specify the output path and name Debug Mode Reuse extracted data Options Download: Network: Playlist: Filesystem: Subtitle: Youku: aria2: Supported Sites Known issues 优酷 西瓜/头条视频…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or lux more popular?
Lightpanda has 41,174 GitHub stars and lux has 31,821. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and lux free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and lux under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and lux?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and lux in Go. 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 lux?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (41,174 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose lux if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.