head to head · open source
scrapy vs Lightpanda
scrapy has 65,209 GitHub stars, 12,092 forks, 394 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lightpanda has 41,174 stars, 2,024 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped today. scrapy leads on adoption by 58% (65,209 vs 41,174 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| scrapy | Lightpanda | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 41K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Zig |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 2.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick scrapy if
- You weight community size — 65K 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
.. logo image:: :target: :alt: Scrapy :width: 480px .. version image:: :target: :alt: PyPI Version .. python version image:: :target: :alt: Supported Python Versions .. tests image:: :target: :alt: Tests .. coverage image:: :target: :alt: Coverage report .. conda image:: :target: :alt: Conda Version .. deepwiki image:: :target: :alt: Ask DeepWiki Scrapy is a web scraping framework to extract structured data from websites. It is cross platform, and requires Python 3.10+. It is maintained by Zyte (formerly Scrapinghub) and many other contributors . .. many other contributors: .. Scrapy: .. Zyte: Install with…
read the full scrapy overview →
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 →
More in Data & Analytics
Related comparisons
More Data Extraction & Web Scraping projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Data Extraction & Web Scraping field.
Frequently asked questions
Is scrapy or Lightpanda more popular?
scrapy has 65,209 GitHub stars and Lightpanda has 41,174. 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 (65,209 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.