head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs pinchtab
Lightpanda has 35,452 GitHub stars, 1,684 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped today. pinchtab has 10,274 stars, 774 forks, 4 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 245% (35,452 vs 10,274 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; pinchtab is written in Go under MIT. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, pinchtab 8%. 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-automation, cdp), 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 | pinchtab | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 35K | ★ 10K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 774 |
| 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 pinchtab if
- You want the pinchtab feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and pinchtab 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 pinchtab
PinchTab is a standalone HTTP server written in Go that gives AI agents direct control over Chrome, aimed at developers and operators who run browser automation on a machine they manage themselves.
read the full pinchtab overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or pinchtab more popular?
Lightpanda has 35,452 GitHub stars and pinchtab has 10,274. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and pinchtab free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and pinchtab under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and pinchtab?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and pinchtab 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 pinchtab?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (35,452 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose pinchtab if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.