head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs superplane
Lightpanda has 35,409 GitHub stars, 1,680 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. superplane has 7,500 stars, 639 forks, 617 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 372% (35,409 vs 7,500 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; superplane is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, superplane 9%. superplane 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 | superplane | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 35K | ★ 7.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Zig | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 639 |
| 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 superplane if
- You want the superplane feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and superplane 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 superplane
SuperPlane is an open source control plane for automating routine software engineering work, distributed under the Apache License 2.0 and written primarily in Go. It describes itself as an "open source factory for one shot engineering," and it lives in the DevOps, platform engineering and workflow automation ecosystem. The project is currently in beta, with its source, releases and issue tracker hosted on GitHub.
read the full superplane overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or superplane more popular?
Lightpanda has 35,409 GitHub stars and superplane has 7,500. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and superplane free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and superplane under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and superplane?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and superplane in Go. 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 superplane?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (35,409 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose superplane if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.