head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs moli
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars, 1,999 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. moli has 22,228 stars, 611 forks, 126 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 84% (40,882 vs 22,228 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; moli is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, moli 3%. moli was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 5 topic tags (browser, browser-automation, headless, 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.
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Side by side
| Lightpanda | moli | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 22K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Zig | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 611 |
| 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 moli if
- You want the moli feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and moli 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 moli
Moli English 简体中文 日本語 Deutsch Français Español Moli is a production ready headless browser for AI agents. Its on demand layout and rendering design combines a complete browser runtime with a lightweight resource footprint. Moli helps your AI agent fetch and extract web pages, search the web, and automate browser tasks. Use it through the CLI, CDP, WebDriver Classic, or WebDriver BiDi. Moli supports Linux, macOS, and Windows. Quick start Give this prompt to your AI agent: Direct installation On Linux or macOS: On Windows, run in PowerShell: Showcase An HTML5 game rendered by Moli and inspected live through Chrome…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or moli more popular?
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars and moli has 22,228. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and moli free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and moli under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and moli?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and moli in Rust. 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 moli?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (40,882 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose moli if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.