head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs patchright-nodejs
Lightpanda has 35,452 GitHub stars, 1,684 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped today. patchright-nodejs has 786 stars, 50 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 4,410% (35,452 vs 786 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; patchright-nodejs is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, patchright-nodejs 6%. Lightpanda was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (browser, playwright), 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 | patchright-nodejs | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 35K | ★ 786 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Zig | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 50 |
| 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 patchright-nodejs if
- You want the patchright-nodejs 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 patchright-nodejs 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 patchright-nodejs
Patchright for Node.js is a patched, undetected drop in replacement for the Playwright browser automation framework, built in TypeScript for Node.js developers whose scraping, testing, and automation jobs get blocked by bot detection.
read the full patchright-nodejs overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or patchright-nodejs more popular?
Lightpanda has 35,452 GitHub stars and patchright-nodejs has 786. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and patchright-nodejs free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and patchright-nodejs under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and patchright-nodejs?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and patchright-nodejs 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 patchright-nodejs?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (35,452 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose patchright-nodejs if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.