head to head · open source
lux vs Steel
lux has 31,694 GitHub stars, 3,313 forks, 545 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. Steel has 7,668 stars, 982 forks, 68 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. lux leads on adoption by 313% (31,694 vs 7,668 stars). lux is written in Go under MIT; Steel is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. lux has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, Steel 13%. Steel 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
| lux | Steel | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 7.7K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-03-29 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.3K | ⑂ 982 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick lux if
- You weight community size — 32K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Steel if
- You want the Steel feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Steel fits your workflow better
About lux
Lux is a video download library and command line tool written in Go, released under the MIT license. It ships as a single lux binary that takes one or more URLs and retrieves the underlying media streams, and it also exposes the downloading logic as a Go library that other programs can embed. The project has existed for roughly nine years and lives in the Go ecosystem, distributed through go install alongside the usual operating system package managers.
About Steel
Steel is an open source, Apache 2.0 licensed browser API written in TypeScript that gives AI agents and applications cloud browser sessions, so teams can automate the web without building browser infrastructure from scratch.
read the full Steel overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lux or Steel more popular?
lux has 31,694 GitHub stars and Steel has 7,668. lux has the larger community by that measure.
Are lux and Steel free?
Both are open source. lux is licensed under MIT and Steel under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lux and Steel?
lux is written in Go and Steel in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, lux or Steel?
Choose lux if you want the larger community (31,694 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Steel if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.