head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs pydoll
Lightpanda has 35,452 GitHub stars, 1,684 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped today. pydoll has 7,090 stars, 406 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 400% (35,452 vs 7,090 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; pydoll is written in HTML under MIT. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, pydoll 6%. Lightpanda was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 5 topic tags (browser-automation, cdp, headless, 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
| Lightpanda | pydoll | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 35K | ★ 7.1K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Zig | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 406 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Lightpanda if
- You weight community size — 35K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Zig
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick pydoll if
- You want the pydoll feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and pydoll fits your workflow better
About Lightpanda
Lightpanda is a headless browser built from scratch in Zig, designed specifically for AI agents and automation tasks. It is not a fork of Chromium or WebKit but a new implementation targeting performance and efficiency in automated web interactions. It lives in the browser automation ecosystem, competing with tools like Puppeteer and Playwright that typically rely on Chromium based headless modes.
read the full Lightpanda overview →
About pydoll
Pydoll is a stealth first Python library that automates Chromium based browsers directly over the DevTools Protocol, without a WebDriver, for developers who scrape, test, or automate sites that block ordinary bots.
read the full pydoll overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or pydoll more popular?
Lightpanda has 35,452 GitHub stars and pydoll has 7,090. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and pydoll free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and pydoll under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and pydoll?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and pydoll in HTML. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Lightpanda or pydoll?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (35,452 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose pydoll if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.