head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs saltcorn
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars, 1,999 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. saltcorn has 2,088 stars, 360 forks, 737 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 1,858% (40,882 vs 2,088 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; saltcorn is written in JavaScript under MIT. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, saltcorn 17%. 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 | saltcorn | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 2.1K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 360 |
| 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 saltcorn if
- You want the saltcorn feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and saltcorn 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 saltcorn
Saltcorn Saltcorn is an extensible open source no code database application builder. Use it to build web and mobile database applications with flexible views, datatypes, layouts and actions This repository contains the core codebase, including the code necessary to self host an instance and to host a multitenant instance. Acknowledgements Saltcorn is using PostgreSQL, node.js, node postgres, express, live plugin manager, craft.js, jQuery Menu Editor, Blockly, CodeMirror and other awesome free and open source projects. Trying out Saltcorn Online A multitenant instance of Saltcorn is running at saltcorn.com, and…
read the full saltcorn overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or saltcorn more popular?
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars and saltcorn has 2,088. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and saltcorn free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and saltcorn under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and saltcorn?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and saltcorn in JavaScript. 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 saltcorn?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (40,882 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose saltcorn if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.