head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs shepherd
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars, 1,999 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. shepherd has 2,503 stars, 219 forks, 12 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 1,533% (40,882 vs 2,503 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; shepherd is written in Python under MIT. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, shepherd 9%. 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 | shepherd | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 2.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-09-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 219 |
| 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 shepherd if
- You want the shepherd feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and shepherd 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 shepherd
Shepherd: Programmable Meta Agents via Reversible Execution Traces [!IMPORTANT] Shepherd is in early alpha and under active development. APIs may still change between releases. Feedback and issues are very welcome! Install Quickstart Permissions Examples Docs Citation Shepherd is a runtime substrate for agent work that needs inspection, reversibility, and supervision. It records agent runs as durable, inspectable execution traces, with retained workspace outputs that can be reviewed before they are selected, applied, released, or discarded. Platforms. Shepherd requires Python 3.11+ . OS level grant enforcement…
read the full shepherd overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or shepherd more popular?
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars and shepherd has 2,503. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and shepherd free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and shepherd under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and shepherd?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and shepherd 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 shepherd?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (40,882 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose shepherd if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.