head to head · open source
puppeteer vs serving
puppeteer has 95,791 GitHub stars, 9,600 forks, 259 open issues and last shipped yesterday. serving has 6,118 stars, 1,244 forks, 165 open issues and last shipped yesterday. puppeteer leads on adoption by 1,466% (95,791 vs 6,118 stars). puppeteer is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; serving is written in Go under Apache-2.0. puppeteer has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, serving 20%. puppeteer 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
| puppeteer | serving | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 96K | ★ 6.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.6K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick puppeteer if
- You weight community size — 96K 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 serving if
- You want the serving feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and serving fits your workflow better
About puppeteer
Puppeteer Puppeteer is a JavaScript library which provides a high level API to control Chrome or Firefox over the DevTools Protocol or WebDriver BiDi. Puppeteer runs in the headless (no visible UI) by default Get started API FAQ Contributing Troubleshooting Installation :::note Modern package managers (including npm (see the RFC), pnpm, Yarn, Bun, and Deno) block dependency install scripts by default. If the install script is blocked, Puppeteer will not download the browser during installation, leading to runtime errors. You can manually download the required browsers after installation by running…
read the full puppeteer overview →
About serving
Knative Serving Knative Serving builds on Kubernetes to support deploying and serving of applications and functions as serverless containers. Serving is easy to get started with and scales to support advanced scenarios. The Knative Serving project provides middleware primitives that enable: Rapid deployment of serverless containers Automatic scaling up and down to zero Routing and network programming Point in time snapshots of deployed code and configurations For documentation on using Knative Serving, see the serving section of the Knative documentation site. For documentation on the Knative Serving…
read the full serving overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is puppeteer or serving more popular?
puppeteer has 95,791 GitHub stars and serving has 6,118. puppeteer has the larger community by that measure.
Are puppeteer and serving free?
Both are open source. puppeteer is licensed under Apache-2.0 and serving under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between puppeteer and serving?
puppeteer is written in TypeScript and serving 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, puppeteer or serving?
Choose puppeteer if you want the larger community (95,791 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose serving if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.