head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs terminal
Lightpanda has 36,181 GitHub stars, 1,715 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped today. terminal has 650 stars, 40 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 5,466% (36,181 vs 650 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; terminal is written in Rust under MIT. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, terminal 6%. Lightpanda was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (browser-automation, cdp), 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 | terminal | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 36K | ★ 650 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-10-10 | 2026-08-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 40 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Lightpanda if
- You weight community size — 36K 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 terminal if
- You want the terminal feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and terminal 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 terminal
Browser Use Terminal is a Rust terminal UI for driving and steering LLM powered browser agents in your own Chrome or a headless Chromium, aimed at developers who want to automate real web tasks from the command line.
read the full terminal overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or terminal more popular?
Lightpanda has 36,181 GitHub stars and terminal has 650. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and terminal free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and terminal under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and terminal?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and terminal in Rust. 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 terminal?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (36,181 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose terminal if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.