head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs reader
Lightpanda has 35,452 GitHub stars, 1,684 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped today. reader has 561 stars, 40 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 6,219% (35,452 vs 561 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; reader is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, reader 7%. 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 | reader | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 35K | ★ 561 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Zig | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-08-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 40 |
| 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 reader if
- You want the reader 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 reader 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 reader
Reader is an Apache 2.0 TypeScript library and hosted service that scrapes, crawls, and drives stealth headless browsers to deliver clean Markdown to AI agents, built for developers who need production grade web access without assembling Puppeteer, stealth plugins, and proxy infrastructure by hand.
read the full reader overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or reader more popular?
Lightpanda has 35,452 GitHub stars and reader has 561. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and reader free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and reader under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and reader?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and reader 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 reader?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (35,452 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose reader if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.