head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs zendriver
Lightpanda has 35,941 GitHub stars, 1,695 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped today. zendriver has 1,450 stars, 108 forks, 57 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 2,379% (35,941 vs 1,450 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; zendriver is written in Python under AGPL-3.0. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, zendriver 7%. 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, 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 | zendriver | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 36K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Zig | Python |
| Last push | 2026-10-04 | 2026-10-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 108 |
| 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 zendriver if
- You want the zendriver 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 zendriver 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 zendriver
Zendriver is a Python framework for undetectable, asynchronous web scraping and browser automation that drives a real Chrome instance over the Chrome DevTools Protocol instead of Selenium or WebDriver.
read the full zendriver overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or zendriver more popular?
Lightpanda has 35,941 GitHub stars and zendriver has 1,450. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and zendriver free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and zendriver under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and zendriver?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and zendriver 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 zendriver?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (35,941 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose zendriver if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.