head to head · open source
obscura vs browser-agent
obscura has 30,307 GitHub stars, 2,291 forks, 134 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. browser-agent has 4,137 stars, 245 forks, 34 open issues and last shipped 9 months ago. obscura leads on adoption by 633% (30,307 vs 4,137 stars). obscura is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; browser-agent is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. obscura has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, browser-agent 6%. obscura was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (browser, 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
| obscura | browser-agent | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 4.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-02-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 245 |
| 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 browser-agent if
- You want the browser-agent feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and browser-agent 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…
read the full obscura overview →
About browser-agent
🚀 New: Magnitude is state of the art, scoring 94% on WebVoyager! Magnitude uses vision AI to enable you to control your browser with natural language. 🧭 Navigate Sees and understands any interface to plan out actions 🖱️ Interact Executes precise actions using mouse and keyboard 🔍 Extract Intelligently extracts useful structured data ✅ Verify Built in test runner with powerful visual assertions You can use it to automate tasks on the web, integrate between apps without APIs, extract data, test your web apps, or as a building block for your own browser agents. ↕️ Magnitude in action! ↕️ Get started Running…
read the full browser-agent overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is obscura or browser-agent more popular?
obscura has 30,307 GitHub stars and browser-agent has 4,137. obscura has the larger community by that measure.
Are obscura and browser-agent free?
Both are open source. obscura is licensed under Apache-2.0 and browser-agent under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between obscura and browser-agent?
obscura is written in Rust and browser-agent 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, obscura or browser-agent?
Choose obscura if you want the larger community (30,307 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose browser-agent if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.