head to head · open source
playwright vs Lightpanda
playwright has 99,226 GitHub stars, 6,789 forks, 185 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lightpanda has 41,174 stars, 2,024 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped today. playwright leads on adoption by 141% (99,226 vs 41,174 stars). playwright is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0. playwright has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, Lightpanda 5%. Lightpanda was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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
| playwright | Lightpanda | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 99K | ★ 41K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Zig |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.8K | ⑂ 2.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick playwright if
- You weight community size — 99K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Lightpanda if
- You want the Lightpanda feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Zig
- You evaluated both and Lightpanda fits your workflow better
About playwright
🎭 Playwright Documentation API reference Playwright is a framework for web automation and testing. It drives Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit with a single API — in your tests, in your scripts, and as a tool for AI agents. Get Started Choose the path that fits your workflow: Playwright Test Playwright Test is a full featured test runner built for end to end testing. It runs tests across Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit with full browser isolation, auto waiting, and web first assertions. Install Or add manually: Write a test Run tests Tests run in parallel across all configured browsers, in headless mode by default…
read the full playwright overview →
About Lightpanda
Lightpanda Browser The headless browser built from scratch for AI agents and automation. Not a Chromium fork. Not a WebKit patch. A new browser, written in Zig.   Benchmarks Requesting 933 real web pages over the network on a AWS EC2 m5.large instance. See benchmark details. Quick start Install Package Managers Latest nightly from Homebrew: Latest nightly from Arch Linux User Repository: Download from the nightly builds You can download the last binary from the nightly builds for Linux and MacOS for both x86 64 and aarch64. For Linux Verify the binary before running anything: Linux aarch64 is also available…
read the full Lightpanda overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is playwright or Lightpanda more popular?
playwright has 99,226 GitHub stars and Lightpanda has 41,174. playwright has the larger community by that measure.
Are playwright and Lightpanda free?
Both are open source. playwright is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Lightpanda under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between playwright and Lightpanda?
playwright is written in TypeScript and Lightpanda in Zig. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, playwright or Lightpanda?
Choose playwright if you want the larger community (99,226 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Lightpanda if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.