head to head · open source
obscura vs parchi
obscura has 27,406 GitHub stars, 2,011 forks, 134 open issues and last shipped yesterday. parchi has 547 stars, 54 forks, 11 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. obscura leads on adoption by 4,910% (27,406 vs 547 stars). obscura is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; parchi is written in TypeScript under MIT. obscura has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, parchi 10%. 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-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 | parchi | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 547 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 54 |
| 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 parchi if
- You want the parchi feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and parchi 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 parchi
Parchi is a free, MIT licensed AI browser copilot — a Chrome MV3 and Firefox 109+ extension written in TypeScript that puts chat driven browser automation in a side panel, built for people who want to navigate, read, click, type, extract, and summarize pages under their own model configuration.
read the full parchi overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is obscura or parchi more popular?
obscura has 27,406 GitHub stars and parchi has 547. obscura has the larger community by that measure.
Are obscura and parchi free?
Both are open source. obscura is licensed under Apache-2.0 and parchi under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between obscura and parchi?
obscura is written in Rust and parchi 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 parchi?
Choose obscura if you want the larger community (27,406 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose parchi if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.