head to head · open source
stagehand vs rod
stagehand has 25,934 GitHub stars, 1,808 forks, 376 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rod has 7,142 stars, 489 forks, 212 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. stagehand leads on adoption by 263% (25,934 vs 7,142 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 | ★ 26K | ★ 7.1K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-08-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.8K | ⑂ 489 |
| 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 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 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 rod
Overview [ ][discord room] Documentation API reference FAQ Rod is a high level driver directly based on DevTools Protocol. It's designed for web automation and scraping for both high level and low level use, senior developers can use the low level packages and functions to easily customize or build up their own version of Rod, the high level functions are just examples to build a default version of Rod. 中文 API 文档 Features Chained context design, intuitive to timeout or cancel the long running task Auto wait elements to be ready Debugging friendly, auto input tracing, remote monitoring headless browser Thread…
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Frequently asked questions
Is stagehand or rod more popular?
stagehand has 25,934 GitHub stars and rod has 7,142. 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 (25,934 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose rod if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.