head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs workflow-use
Lightpanda has 35,518 GitHub stars, 1,686 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped today. workflow-use has 4,184 stars, 353 forks, 61 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 749% (35,518 vs 4,184 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; workflow-use is written in Python under AGPL-3.0. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, workflow-use 8%. 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.
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Side by side
| Lightpanda | workflow-use | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 36K | ★ 4.2K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Zig | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-23 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 353 |
| 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 workflow-use if
- You want the workflow-use feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and workflow-use 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 workflow-use
Workflow Use is a Python, AGPL 3.0 licensed tool for creating and executing deterministic browser workflows — captured by demonstration or generated from a natural language prompt — that fall back to Browser Use whenever a recorded step fails, and it is aimed at developers and automation teams that need repeatable web tasks rather than one off AI agent runs.
read the full workflow-use overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or workflow-use more popular?
Lightpanda has 35,518 GitHub stars and workflow-use has 4,184. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and workflow-use free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and workflow-use under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and workflow-use?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and workflow-use in Python. 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 workflow-use?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (35,518 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose workflow-use if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.