head to head · open source
scrapy vs Lightpanda
scrapy has 64,413 GitHub stars, 11,964 forks, 394 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Lightpanda has 35,452 stars, 1,684 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped today. scrapy leads on adoption by 82% (64,413 vs 35,452 stars). scrapy is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0. scrapy has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, Lightpanda 5%. 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
| scrapy | Lightpanda | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 64K | ★ 35K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Zig |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 1.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick scrapy if
- You weight community size — 64K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Lightpanda if
- You want the Lightpanda feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Zig
- You evaluated both and Lightpanda fits your workflow better
About scrapy
Scrapy is a web scraping framework written in Python, distributed under the BSD 3 Clause license, and described in its own README as a tool to extract structured data from websites. It is cross platform and requires Python 3.10 or newer. The project is maintained by Zyte, formerly known as Scrapinghub, together with a broader group of contributors, and it lives in the Python ecosystem as an installable library rather than a hosted service. Its repository is roughly seventeen years old, which places it among the longer running projects in the web scraping space.
read the full scrapy overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is scrapy or Lightpanda more popular?
scrapy has 64,413 GitHub stars and Lightpanda has 35,452. scrapy has the larger community by that measure.
Are scrapy and Lightpanda free?
Both are open source. scrapy is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and Lightpanda under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between scrapy and Lightpanda?
scrapy is written in Python and Lightpanda in Zig. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, scrapy or Lightpanda?
Choose scrapy if you want the larger community (64,413 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose Lightpanda if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.