head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs x-crawl
Lightpanda has 41,174 GitHub stars, 2,024 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. x-crawl has 1,890 stars, 116 forks, 16 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 2,079% (41,174 vs 1,890 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; x-crawl is written in TypeScript under MIT. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, x-crawl 6%. Lightpanda was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (puppeteer), 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 | x-crawl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 1.9K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 116 |
| 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 x-crawl if
- You want the x-crawl feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and x-crawl 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 x-crawl
x crawl · English 简体中文 x crawl is a flexible Node.js AI assisted crawler library. Flexible usage and powerful AI assistance functions make crawler work more efficient, intelligent and convenient. It consists of two parts: Crawler: It consists of a crawler API and various functions that can work normally even without relying on AI. AI: Integrate ollama and openai, AI simplifies many tedious operations. If you find x crawl helpful, or you like x crawl, you can give x crawl repository a like on GitHub A star. Your support is the driving force for our continuous improvement! thank you for your support! Features 🤖…
read the full x-crawl overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or x-crawl more popular?
Lightpanda has 41,174 GitHub stars and x-crawl has 1,890. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and x-crawl free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and x-crawl under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and x-crawl?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and x-crawl 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 x-crawl?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (41,174 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose x-crawl if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.