head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs Maxun
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars, 1,999 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Maxun has 18,134 stars, 1,564 forks, 105 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 125% (40,882 vs 18,134 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; Maxun is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, Maxun 9%. 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-automation, playwright), 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 | Maxun | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 18K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Zig | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| 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 Maxun if
- You want the Maxun feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Maxun 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 Maxun
Maxun Turn Any Website Into A Structured API ✨ The unified open source no code platform for real time web scraping, crawling, search and AI data extraction ✨ Go To App • Documentation • Website • Discord • Watch Tutorials Sponsors Webshare Webshare gives you instant access to a proxy pool of 80M+ ethically sourced IPs across 195+ countries, with rotating residential, static ISP, and datacenter options plus a full API. It includes a 100+ Gbps backbone, country/city/state/ZIP/ASN level targeting, and requires no credit card to start. Free tier: 10 proxies + 1GB/month · Discount: MAXUN20 Get 20% off your first…
read the full Maxun 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 Maxun more popular?
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars and Maxun has 18,134. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and Maxun free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Maxun under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and Maxun?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and Maxun 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 Maxun?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (40,882 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Maxun if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.