head to head · open source
servo vs serenity
servo has 38,301 GitHub stars, 3,865 forks, 3,209 open issues and last shipped yesterday. serenity has 33,938 stars, 3,488 forks, 739 open issues and last shipped yesterday. servo leads on adoption by 13% (38,301 vs 33,938 stars). servo is written in Rust under MPL-2.0; serenity is written in C++ under BSD-2-Clause. servo has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, serenity 10%. servo was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (browser), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| servo | serenity | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 38K | ★ 34K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | BSD-2-Clause |
| Written in | Rust | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.9K | ⑂ 3.5K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick servo if
- You weight community size — 38K stars and counting
- You want the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick serenity if
- You want the serenity feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and serenity fits your workflow better
About servo
The Servo Parallel Browser Engine Project Servo is a prototype web browser engine written in the Rust language. It is currently developed on 64 bit macOS, 64 bit Linux, 64 bit Windows, 64 bit OpenHarmony, and Android. Servo welcomes contribution from everyone. Check out: The Servo Book for documentation servo.org for news and guides Coordination of Servo development happens: Here in the Github Issues On the Servo Zulip In video calls advertised in the Servo Project repo. Getting started For more detailed build instructions, see the Servo Book under [Getting the Code] and [Building Servo]. [Getting the Code]…
read the full servo overview →
About serenity
SerenityOS Graphical Unix like operating system for 64 bit x86, Arm, and RISC V computers. FAQ Documentation Build Instructions About SerenityOS is a love letter to '90s user interfaces with a custom Unix like core. It flatters with sincerity by stealing beautiful ideas from various other systems. Roughly speaking, the goal is a marriage between the aesthetic of late 1990s productivity software and the power user accessibility of late 2000s \ nix. This is a system by us, for us, based on the things we like. You can watch videos of the system being developed on YouTube: Andreas Kling's channel Linus Groh's…
read the full serenity overview →
More in Productivity & Utilities
Related comparisons
More Browsers & Extensions projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Browsers & Extensions field.
Frequently asked questions
Is servo or serenity more popular?
servo has 38,301 GitHub stars and serenity has 33,938. servo has the larger community by that measure.
Are servo and serenity free?
Both are open source. servo is licensed under MPL-2.0 and serenity under BSD-2-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between servo and serenity?
servo is written in Rust and serenity in C++. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, servo or serenity?
Choose servo if you want the larger community (38,301 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose serenity if its feature set, stack or BSD-2-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.