head to head · open source
obscura vs SingleFile
obscura has 30,141 GitHub stars, 2,279 forks, 134 open issues and last shipped yesterday. SingleFile has 22,811 stars, 1,432 forks, 101 open issues and last shipped yesterday. obscura leads on adoption by 32% (30,141 vs 22,811 stars). obscura is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; SingleFile is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0. obscura has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, SingleFile 6%. SingleFile 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.
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Side by side
| obscura | SingleFile | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 23K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Rust | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick obscura if
- You weight community size — 30K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick SingleFile if
- You want the SingleFile feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and SingleFile fits your workflow better
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…
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About SingleFile
SingleFile SingleFile helps you to save a complete web page into a single HTML file. SingleFile is a Web Extension (and a CLI tool) compatible with Chrome, Firefox (Desktop and Mobile), Microsoft Edge, Safari, Vivaldi, Brave, Waterfox, Yandex browser, and Opera. Table of Contents SingleFile Table of Contents Demo Install Getting started Additional notes FAQ Release notes Known Issues and Troubleshooting Command Line Interface (SingleFile CLI) Integration with user scripts File format comparison Projects using/compatible with SingleFile Privacy Policy Contributors Code derived from third party projects Icons…
read the full SingleFile overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is obscura or SingleFile more popular?
obscura has 30,141 GitHub stars and SingleFile has 22,811. obscura has the larger community by that measure.
Are obscura and SingleFile free?
Both are open source. obscura is licensed under Apache-2.0 and SingleFile under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between obscura and SingleFile?
obscura is written in Rust and SingleFile in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, obscura or SingleFile?
Choose obscura if you want the larger community (30,141 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose SingleFile if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.