head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs ui-builder
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars, 1,999 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ui-builder has 673 stars, 96 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 5,975% (40,882 vs 673 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; ui-builder is written in TypeScript under MIT. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, ui-builder 14%. 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 | ui-builder | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 673 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-07-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 96 |
| 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 ui-builder if
- You want the ui-builder feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and ui-builder 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 ui-builder
UI Builder — Visual Editor for Your React App UI Builder is a shadcn/ui package that adds a Figma style editor to your own product, letting non developers compose pages, emails, dashboards, and white label views with the exact React components you already ship. Layouts are saved as plain JSON for easy versioning and can be rendered instantly with dynamic data. View Full Documentation UI Builder is now part of BTST — ship full stack features faster with production ready plugins that generate database schemas, API routes, and pages for Next.js, TanStack Start, and React Router. Installation Quick Start with…
read the full ui-builder overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or ui-builder more popular?
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars and ui-builder has 673. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and ui-builder free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and ui-builder under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and ui-builder?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and ui-builder 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 ui-builder?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (40,882 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose ui-builder if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.