head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs reverse-api-engineer
Lightpanda has 35,452 GitHub stars, 1,684 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped today. reverse-api-engineer has 1,174 stars, 107 forks, 12 open issues and last shipped 21 days ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 2,920% (35,452 vs 1,174 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; reverse-api-engineer is written in Python under MIT. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, reverse-api-engineer 9%. Lightpanda was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | reverse-api-engineer | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 35K | ★ 1.2K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-08-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 107 |
| 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 reverse-api-engineer if
- You want the reverse-api-engineer feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and reverse-api-engineer 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 reverse-api-engineer
Reverse API Engineer is an MIT licensed Python CLI and agent that turns a website into a typed API client by capturing the site's own network traffic and having a language model write the client from it, built for developers who need programmatic access to a site that offers no usable public API.
read the full reverse-api-engineer overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or reverse-api-engineer more popular?
Lightpanda has 35,452 GitHub stars and reverse-api-engineer has 1,174. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and reverse-api-engineer free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and reverse-api-engineer under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and reverse-api-engineer?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and reverse-api-engineer in Python. 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 reverse-api-engineer?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (35,452 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose reverse-api-engineer if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.