head to head · open source
page-agent vs katana
page-agent has 29,217 GitHub stars, 2,626 forks, 94 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. katana has 17,579 stars, 1,188 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. page-agent leads on adoption by 66% (29,217 vs 17,579 stars). page-agent is written in TypeScript under MIT; katana is written in Go under MIT. page-agent has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, katana 7%. katana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| page-agent | katana | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 18K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-21 | 2026-09-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick page-agent if
- You weight community size — 29K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick katana if
- You want the katana feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and katana fits your workflow better
About page-agent
Page Agent is an MIT licensed TypeScript library from Alibaba that embeds a natural language GUI agent directly inside a web page, aimed at product teams, accessibility engineers, and automation developers who want to drive their own interfaces with plain language instructions instead of hand written scripts.
read the full page-agent overview →
About katana
Katana is an open source, MIT licensed crawling and spidering framework written in Go, built for security engineers and automation pipelines that need to map web applications at scale rather than explore them by hand.
read the full katana overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is page-agent or katana more popular?
page-agent has 29,217 GitHub stars and katana has 17,579. page-agent has the larger community by that measure.
Are page-agent and katana free?
Both are open source. page-agent is licensed under MIT and katana under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between page-agent and katana?
page-agent is written in TypeScript and katana in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, page-agent or katana?
Choose page-agent if you want the larger community (29,217 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose katana if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.