head to head · open source
obscura vs ego-lite
obscura has 27,406 GitHub stars, 2,011 forks, 134 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ego-lite has 16,238 stars, 851 forks, 169 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. obscura leads on adoption by 69% (27,406 vs 16,238 stars). obscura is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; ego-lite is written in JavaScript under MIT. obscura has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, ego-lite 5%. 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, browser-automation), 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 | ego-lite | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 16K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 851 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick obscura if
- You weight community size — 27K 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 ego-lite if
- You want the ego-lite feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and ego-lite fits your workflow better
About obscura
Obscura is an open source headless browser engine written in Rust, built for web scraping and AI agent automation. It runs real JavaScript through V8, speaks the Chrome DevTools Protocol, and presents itself as a drop in replacement for headless Chrome when driven by Puppeteer or Playwright. The project lives in the browser automation and headless browser corner of the Rust ecosystem, and it ships under the Apache 2.0 license.
read the full obscura overview →
About ego-lite
ego lite is an MIT licensed browser from citrolabs that lets a person and their AI agents drive the same browser in parallel, aimed at developers who want Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or a custom agent CLI to automate real, logged in web pages without surrendering the tabs they are using.
read the full ego-lite overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is obscura or ego-lite more popular?
obscura has 27,406 GitHub stars and ego-lite has 16,238. obscura has the larger community by that measure.
Are obscura and ego-lite free?
Both are open source. obscura is licensed under Apache-2.0 and ego-lite under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between obscura and ego-lite?
obscura is written in Rust and ego-lite 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 ego-lite?
Choose obscura if you want the larger community (27,406 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose ego-lite if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.