head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs stealth-browser-mcp
Lightpanda has 35,452 GitHub stars, 1,684 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped today. stealth-browser-mcp has 2,104 stars, 291 forks, 4 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 1,585% (35,452 vs 2,104 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; stealth-browser-mcp is written in Python under MIT. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, stealth-browser-mcp 14%. Lightpanda was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (browser-automation), 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 | stealth-browser-mcp | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 35K | ★ 2.1K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 291 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Lightpanda if
- You weight community size — 35K 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 stealth-browser-mcp if
- You want the stealth-browser-mcp feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and stealth-browser-mcp fits your workflow better
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 →
About stealth-browser-mcp
Stealth Browser MCP is a Python, MIT licensed MCP server that hands MCP compatible AI agents a real Chrome family browser to drive, so the agent can reach pages sitting behind Cloudflare challenges, anti bot checks, and login walls.
read the full stealth-browser-mcp overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or stealth-browser-mcp more popular?
Lightpanda has 35,452 GitHub stars and stealth-browser-mcp has 2,104. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and stealth-browser-mcp free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and stealth-browser-mcp under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and stealth-browser-mcp?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and stealth-browser-mcp 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 stealth-browser-mcp?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (35,452 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose stealth-browser-mcp if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.