head to head · open source
lux vs CloakBrowser
lux has 31,686 GitHub stars, 3,312 forks, 545 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. CloakBrowser has 31,528 stars, 2,612 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. lux leads on adoption by 1% (31,686 vs 31,528 stars). lux is written in Go under MIT; CloakBrowser is written in Python under MIT. lux has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, CloakBrowser 8%. CloakBrowser 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
| lux | CloakBrowser | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 32K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-03-29 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.3K | ⑂ 2.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick lux if
- You weight community size — 32K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick CloakBrowser if
- You want the CloakBrowser feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and CloakBrowser fits your workflow better
About lux
Lux is a video download library and command line tool written in Go, released under the MIT license. It ships as a single lux binary that takes one or more URLs and retrieves the underlying media streams, and it also exposes the downloading logic as a Go library that other programs can embed. The project has existed for roughly nine years and lives in the Go ecosystem, distributed through go install alongside the usual operating system package managers.
About CloakBrowser
CloakBrowser is a stealth Chromium build for Python and JavaScript teams that need browser automation to survive bot detection systems, aimed at scraping and AI agent engineers who want to replace Playwright or Puppeteer without rewriting their code.
read the full CloakBrowser overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lux or CloakBrowser more popular?
lux has 31,686 GitHub stars and CloakBrowser has 31,528. lux has the larger community by that measure.
Are lux and CloakBrowser free?
Both are open source. lux is licensed under MIT and CloakBrowser under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lux and CloakBrowser?
lux is written in Go and CloakBrowser 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, lux or CloakBrowser?
Choose lux if you want the larger community (31,686 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose CloakBrowser if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.