head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs moli
Lightpanda has 35,452 GitHub stars, 1,684 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped today. moli has 2,124 stars, 144 forks, 126 open issues and last shipped today. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 1,569% (35,452 vs 2,124 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; moli is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, moli 7%. moli was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (browser, browser-automation, playwright, 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Lightpanda | moli | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 35K | ★ 2.1K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Zig | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 144 |
| 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 moli if
- You want the moli feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and moli 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 moli
Moli is a production ready, Rust built headless browser for AI agents that lets an agent fetch and extract web pages, search the web, and automate browser tasks through a CLI or the CDP, WebDriver Classic, and WebDriver BiDi protocols.
More in Data & Analytics
Related comparisons
More Data Extraction & Web Scraping projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Data Extraction & Web Scraping field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or moli more popular?
Lightpanda has 35,452 GitHub stars and moli has 2,124. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and moli free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and moli under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and moli?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and moli in Rust. 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 moli?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (35,452 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose moli if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.