head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs puppeteer-sharp
Lightpanda has 41,174 GitHub stars, 2,024 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped today. puppeteer-sharp has 3,934 stars, 483 forks, 11 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 947% (41,174 vs 3,934 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; puppeteer-sharp is written in C# under MIT. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, puppeteer-sharp 12%. Lightpanda was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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.
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Side by side
| Lightpanda | puppeteer-sharp | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 3.9K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | C# |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 483 |
| 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 puppeteer-sharp if
- You want the puppeteer-sharp feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and puppeteer-sharp 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 puppeteer-sharp
Puppeteer Sharp [ ][NugetUrl] [ ][BuildUrl] [ ][BuildDemoUrl] [ ][Backers] [NugetUrl]: [BuildUrl]: [BuildDemoUrl]: [Backers]: Puppeteer Sharp is a .NET port of the official Node.JS Puppeteer API. Recent news Test the latest Firefox versions using WebDriver BiDi! Check the PuppeteerSharp 21 release notes. PuppeteerSharp now supports AOT compilation! Check the PuppeteerSharp 19 release notes!. Useful links API Documentation Slack channel puppeteer sharp StackOverflow Issues Blog Published Packages Prerequisites Puppeteer Sharp comes in two flavors: a NetStandard 2.0 library for .NET Framework 4.6.1 and .NET Core…
read the full puppeteer-sharp overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or puppeteer-sharp more popular?
Lightpanda has 41,174 GitHub stars and puppeteer-sharp has 3,934. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and puppeteer-sharp free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and puppeteer-sharp under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and puppeteer-sharp?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and puppeteer-sharp in C#. 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 puppeteer-sharp?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (41,174 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose puppeteer-sharp if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.