head to head · open source
stagehand vs browserless
stagehand has 24,565 GitHub stars, 1,698 forks, 376 open issues and last shipped today. browserless has 1,836 stars, 91 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped today. stagehand leads on adoption by 1,238% (24,565 vs 1,836 stars). stagehand is written in TypeScript under MIT; browserless is written in JavaScript under MIT. stagehand has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, browserless 5%. browserless 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
| stagehand | browserless | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 25K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 91 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick stagehand if
- You weight community size — 25K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick browserless if
- You want the browserless feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and browserless fits your workflow better
About stagehand
Stagehand is the MIT licensed SDK for extracting data and interacting with any site on the web, available in TypeScript, Python, and Go, and aimed at developers building AI agents that need to drive a browser the way a person does rather than at engineers writing test suites.
read the full stagehand overview →
About browserless
Browserless is an MIT licensed JavaScript library that drives headless Chrome and Chromium on top of Puppeteer, giving Node.js applications a production ready API for screenshots, PDFs, and extracted text or HTML.
read the full browserless overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is stagehand or browserless more popular?
stagehand has 24,565 GitHub stars and browserless has 1,836. stagehand has the larger community by that measure.
Are stagehand and browserless free?
Both are open source. stagehand is licensed under MIT and browserless under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between stagehand and browserless?
stagehand is written in TypeScript and browserless 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, stagehand or browserless?
Choose stagehand if you want the larger community (24,565 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose browserless if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.