head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs open-claude-cowork
Lightpanda has 35,409 GitHub stars, 1,680 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. open-claude-cowork has 4,359 stars, 735 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 712% (35,409 vs 4,359 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 17%. 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 | ★ 35K | ★ 4.4K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-05-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 735 |
| 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 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 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 open-claude-cowork
Open Claude Cowork is an open source JavaScript desktop chat application in the Electron, Node.js, and Anthropic Claude ecosystem. It uses the Claude Agent SDK, Composio Tool Router, and MCP, and includes Secure Clawdbot for messaging platforms.
read the full open-claude-cowork overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or open-claude-cowork more popular?
Lightpanda has 35,409 GitHub stars and open-claude-cowork has 4,359. 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 (35,409 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.