head to head · open source
stagehand vs ketch
stagehand has 24,565 GitHub stars, 1,698 forks, 376 open issues and last shipped today. ketch has 596 stars, 36 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. stagehand leads on adoption by 4,022% (24,565 vs 596 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 | ★ 25K | ★ 596 |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 36 |
| 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 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 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 ketch
ketch is a stateless command line tool that performs web search, code search, library documentation lookup, and page scraping from one Go binary, built for both people working in a terminal and the AI agents they build.
read the full ketch overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is stagehand or ketch more popular?
stagehand has 24,565 GitHub stars and ketch has 596. 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 (24,565 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose ketch if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.