head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs Steel
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars, 1,999 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Steel has 7,908 stars, 1,002 forks, 68 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 417% (40,882 vs 7,908 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; Steel is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, Steel 13%. 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Lightpanda | Steel | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 7.9K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Zig | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 1.0K |
| 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 Steel if
- You want the Steel feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Steel 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 Steel
Steel The open source browser API for AI agents & apps. The best way to build live web agents and browser automation tools. Get Started · Documentation · Website · Cookbook ✨ Highlights Steel.dev is an open source browser API that makes it easy to build AI apps and agents that interact with the web. Instead of building automation infrastructure from scratch, you can focus on your AI application while Steel handles the complexity. Under the hood, it manages sessions, pages, and browser processes, allowing you to perform complex browsing tasks programmatically without any of the headaches: Full Browser Control…
read the full Steel 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 Lightpanda or Steel more popular?
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars and Steel has 7,908. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and Steel free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Steel under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and Steel?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and Steel 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 Steel?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (40,882 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Steel if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.