head to head · open source
stagehand vs ketch
stagehand has 25,934 GitHub stars, 1,808 forks, 376 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ketch has 740 stars, 44 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. stagehand leads on adoption by 3,405% (25,934 vs 740 stars). stagehand is written in TypeScript under MIT; ketch is written in Go under MIT. stagehand has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, ketch 6%. stagehand was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ai-agents), 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
| stagehand | ketch | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 740 |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.8K | ⑂ 44 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick stagehand if
- You weight community size — 26K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick ketch if
- You want the ketch feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and ketch fits your workflow better
About stagehand
Stagehand is the SDK to extract data and interact with any site on the web. Playwright was built for testing. Stagehand is built for agents, in TypeScript, Python, and Go. Docs · Quickstart · ⭐ Star this repo AI that uses the browser like humans. Sign in once, keep the session, and pull structured data out the other side. Python Go Install Python Go Local runs need Chrome installed. Full setup: Quickstart. Why Stagehand Token efficiency Hybrid accessibilit
read the full stagehand overview →
About ketch
ketch A stateless CLI for web search, code search, library docs, and scraping — one binary, no daemon, no API server to run. Why ketch Most research tooling for agents means wiring up several provider SDKs, each with its own auth and response shape. ketch collapses that into one binary with three research surfaces: ketch search — web search, no API key required (Brave, DuckDuckGo, SearXNG, Exa, Firecrawl, Keenable, Tavily, Parallel, SerpBase, Serply, or You.com) ketch code — grep real OSS source across public repos (Grep, Sourcegraph, or GitHub Code Search) ketch docs — curated, version aware library…
read the full ketch overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is stagehand or ketch more popular?
stagehand has 25,934 GitHub stars and ketch has 740. stagehand has the larger community by that measure.
Are stagehand and ketch free?
Both are open source. stagehand is licensed under MIT and ketch under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between stagehand and ketch?
stagehand is written in TypeScript and ketch in Go. 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 ketch?
Choose stagehand if you want the larger community (25,934 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose ketch if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.