head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs wa-js
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars, 1,999 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. wa-js has 832 stars, 252 forks, 19 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 4,814% (40,882 vs 832 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; wa-js is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, wa-js 30%. 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 | wa-js | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 832 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Zig | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 252 |
| 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 wa-js if
- You want the wa-js 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 wa-js 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 wa-js
English Português (Brasil) WPPConnect/WA JS Expose WhatsApp Web functions through the browser side WPP API. A project in the WPPConnect ecosystem, maintained by WPPConnect Team. Getting started Documentation Contributing Support WPPConnect Overview For extension and browser integration developers who need to execute code inside WhatsApp Web. The generated dist/wppconnect wa.js bundle exposes chat, contact, connection and other modules; it is not a Node.js WhatsApp client. Features Chat and media operations, groups, communities, channels and business catalog functions. Connection events, profile/privacy settings…
read the full wa-js 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 wa-js more popular?
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars and wa-js has 832. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and wa-js free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and wa-js under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and wa-js?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and wa-js 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 wa-js?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (40,882 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose wa-js if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.