head to head · open source
obscura vs feathers
obscura has 30,141 GitHub stars, 2,279 forks, 134 open issues and last shipped yesterday. feathers has 15,256 stars, 802 forks, 121 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. obscura leads on adoption by 98% (30,141 vs 15,256 stars). obscura is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; feathers is written in TypeScript under MIT. obscura has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, feathers 5%. obscura 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 | feathers | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 15K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 802 |
| 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 feathers if
- You want the feathers feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and feathers 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 feathers
Feathers is a full stack framework for creating web APIs and real time applications with TypeScript or JavaScript. Feathers can interact with any backend technology, supports many databases out of the box and works with any frontend like React, VueJS, Angular, React Native, Android or iOS. Getting started Get started with just three commands: To learn more about Feathers visit the website at feathersjs.com or jump right into the Feathers guides. Contributing To start developing, clone this repository, then run: To run all tests run Individual tests can be run in the module you are working on: License Copyright…
read the full feathers overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is obscura or feathers more popular?
obscura has 30,141 GitHub stars and feathers has 15,256. obscura has the larger community by that measure.
Are obscura and feathers free?
Both are open source. obscura is licensed under Apache-2.0 and feathers under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between obscura and feathers?
obscura is written in Rust and feathers 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 feathers?
Choose obscura if you want the larger community (30,141 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose feathers if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.