head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs open-claude-cowork
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars, 1,999 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. open-claude-cowork has 4,307 stars, 702 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 849% (40,882 vs 4,307 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; open-claude-cowork is written in JavaScript under MIT. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, open-claude-cowork 16%. 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 | open-claude-cowork | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 4.3K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-05-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 702 |
| 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 open-claude-cowork if
- You want the open-claude-cowork feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and open-claude-cowork 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 open-claude-cowork
Open Claude Cowork An open source desktop chat application powered by Claude Agent SDK and Composio Tool Router. Automate your work end to end across desktop and all your work apps in one place. Get your free API key to get started → Pst. hey, you, join our stargazers :) What's Inside This repo includes two powerful AI tools: Both include 500+ app integrations via Composio (Gmail, Slack, GitHub, Google Drive, and more). Quick Start Open Claude Cowork Then run in two terminals: 🦑 Secure Clawdbot Select "Terminal chat" to test, or "Start gateway" to connect WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal/iMessage. See Secure Clawdbot…
read the full open-claude-cowork overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or open-claude-cowork more popular?
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars and open-claude-cowork has 4,307. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and open-claude-cowork free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and open-claude-cowork under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and open-claude-cowork?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and open-claude-cowork 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 open-claude-cowork?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (40,882 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose open-claude-cowork if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.