head to head · open source
stagehand vs rod
stagehand has 24,565 GitHub stars, 1,698 forks, 376 open issues and last shipped today. rod has 7,107 stars, 485 forks, 212 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. stagehand leads on adoption by 246% (24,565 vs 7,107 stars). stagehand is written in TypeScript under MIT; rod is written in Go under MIT. stagehand has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, rod 7%. stagehand was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (cdp), 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 | rod | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 25K | ★ 7.1K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-08-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 485 |
| 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 rod if
- You want the rod feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and rod 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 rod
Rod is a high level driver for the Chrome DevTools Protocol, written in Go and released under the MIT license. It lives in the Go ecosystem and is published as the module github.com/go rod/rod , with documentation hosted at go rod.github.io and an API reference on pkg.go.dev. The project is designed for web automation and scraping, and it deliberately spans two levels of use: senior developers can work with the low level packages and functions to customize the driver or build their own version of it, while the high level functions serve as examples that produce a default, ready to use build.
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Frequently asked questions
Is stagehand or rod more popular?
stagehand has 24,565 GitHub stars and rod has 7,107. stagehand has the larger community by that measure.
Are stagehand and rod free?
Both are open source. stagehand is licensed under MIT and rod under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between stagehand and rod?
stagehand is written in TypeScript and rod 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 rod?
Choose stagehand if you want the larger community (24,565 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose rod if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.