head to head · open source
servo vs obscura
servo has 38,301 GitHub stars, 3,865 forks, 3,209 open issues and last shipped yesterday. obscura has 30,141 stars, 2,279 forks, 134 open issues and last shipped yesterday. servo leads on adoption by 27% (38,301 vs 30,141 stars). servo is written in Rust under MPL-2.0; obscura is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. servo has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, obscura 8%. servo was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (browser, rust), 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
| servo | obscura | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 38K | ★ 30K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.9K | ⑂ 2.3K |
| 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 obscura if
- You want the obscura feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and obscura 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]…
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About obscura
Obscura The open source headless browser for AI agents and web scraping. Lightweight, stealthy, and built in Rust. Native rendering is here. No Chromium required. 🎉 Capture screenshots, screencast live pages, and export PDFs directly with Obscura. Obscura is a headless browser engine written in Rust, built for web scraping and AI agent automation. It runs real JavaScript via V8, supports the Chrome DevTools Protocol, and acts as a drop in replacement for headless Chrome with Puppeteer and Playwright. Why Obscura over headless Chrome? Obscura inspired Cloudflare Kitesurf’s first prototype Cloudflare began by…
read the full obscura overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is servo or obscura more popular?
servo has 38,301 GitHub stars and obscura has 30,141. servo has the larger community by that measure.
Are servo and obscura free?
Both are open source. servo is licensed under MPL-2.0 and obscura under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between servo and obscura?
servo is written in Rust and obscura in Rust. 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 obscura?
Choose servo if you want the larger community (38,301 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose obscura if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.