head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs ShardBrowser
Lightpanda has 42,051 GitHub stars, 2,117 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped today. ShardBrowser has 1,523 stars, 182 forks, 22 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 2,661% (42,051 vs 1,523 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; ShardBrowser is written in TypeScript under MIT. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, ShardBrowser 12%. 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 | ShardBrowser | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 42K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-15 | 2026-11-10 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.1K | ⑂ 182 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Lightpanda if
- You weight community size — 42K 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 ShardBrowser if
- You want the ShardBrowser feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and ShardBrowser 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 ShardBrowser
ShardBrowser Launcher A free, open source anti detect browser launcher for web scraping and multi accounting. Patched Chromium 157 with engine level fingerprint spoofing, a local API, an MCP server and SDKs. Website: shardbrowser.com Overview · Features · Screenshots · Comparison · Install · Usage ShardBrowser is built by the ShardX team (formerly ProxyShard). ProxyShard provides full SOCKS5 UDP relay support (RFC 1928 §7) and active p0f TCP fingerprint spoofing at the proxy exit. This keeps the operating system presented by the proxy consistent with the SYN/ACK shape seen by websites. ShardBrowser is the anti…
read the full ShardBrowser overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or ShardBrowser more popular?
Lightpanda has 42,051 GitHub stars and ShardBrowser has 1,523. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and ShardBrowser free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and ShardBrowser under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and ShardBrowser?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and ShardBrowser 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 ShardBrowser?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (42,051 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose ShardBrowser if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.