head to head · open source
obscura vs mocha
obscura has 30,141 GitHub stars, 2,279 forks, 134 open issues and last shipped yesterday. mocha has 22,912 stars, 3,144 forks, 222 open issues and last shipped yesterday. obscura leads on adoption by 32% (30,141 vs 22,912 stars). obscura is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; mocha is written in JavaScript under MIT. obscura has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, mocha 14%. mocha was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (browser), 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
| obscura | mocha | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 23K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 3.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick obscura if
- You weight community size — 30K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick mocha if
- You want the mocha feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and mocha fits your workflow better
About obscura
Obscura The open source headless browser for AI agents and web scraping. Lightweight, stealthy, and built in Rust. Native rendering is here. No Chromium required. 🎉 Capture screenshots, screencast live pages, and export PDFs directly with Obscura. Obscura is a headless browser engine written in Rust, built for web scraping and AI agent automation. It runs real JavaScript via V8, supports the Chrome DevTools Protocol, and acts as a drop in replacement for headless Chrome with Puppeteer and Playwright. Why Obscura over headless Chrome? Obscura inspired Cloudflare Kitesurf’s first prototype Cloudflare began by…
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About mocha
☕️ Classic, reliable, trusted test framework for Node.js and the browser ☕️ Links Documentation Release Notes / History / Changes Code of Conduct Contributing Development Discord (ask questions here!) Issue Tracker Backers Become a backer and show your support to our open source project on our site. Sponsors Does your company use Mocha? Ask your manager or marketing team if your company would be interested in supporting our project. Support will allow the maintainers to dedicate more time for maintenance and new features for everyone. Also, your company's logo will show on GitHub and on our site who doesn't want…
read the full mocha overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is obscura or mocha more popular?
obscura has 30,141 GitHub stars and mocha has 22,912. obscura has the larger community by that measure.
Are obscura and mocha free?
Both are open source. obscura is licensed under Apache-2.0 and mocha under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between obscura and mocha?
obscura is written in Rust and mocha in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, obscura or mocha?
Choose obscura if you want the larger community (30,141 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose mocha if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.