head to head · open source
uBlock vs luakit
uBlock has 69,033 GitHub stars, 4,427 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped yesterday. luakit has 2,322 stars, 256 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. uBlock leads on adoption by 2,873% (69,033 vs 2,322 stars). uBlock is written in JavaScript under GPL-3.0; luakit is written in Lua under GPL-3.0. uBlock has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, luakit 11%. uBlock 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
| uBlock | luakit | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 69K | ★ 2.3K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Lua |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-06-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.4K | ⑂ 256 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick uBlock if
- You weight community size — 69K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick luakit if
- You want the luakit feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Lua
- You evaluated both and luakit fits your workflow better
About uBlock
[![Badge Commits]][Commit Rate] [![Badge Issues]][Issues] [![Badge Localization]][Crowdin] [![Badge License]][License] [![Badge NPM]][NPM] [![Badge Mozilla]][Mozilla] ![Badge Chrome] [![Badge Edge]][Edge] uBlock Origin (uBO) GitHub Releases Stable and development versions on Firefox, Chromium MV2, and Thunderbird. Must be placed manually into web browsers; the Chromium and Thunderbird versions usually won't auto update. Related: uBlock Origin Lite uBlock Origin (uBO) is a CPU and memory efficient [wide spectrum content blocker][Blocking] for Chromium and Firefox. It blocks ads, trackers, coin miners, popups…
read the full uBlock overview →
About luakit
Luakit luakit is a fast, light and simple to use micro browser framework extensible by Lua using the WebKit web content engine and the GTK+ toolkit. Don't Panic! You don't have to be a developer to use luakit on a daily basis. If you are familiar with quitebrowser, vim browser, jumanji or extensions like Vimium or cVim etc, you will find luakit behaves similarly out of the box. Requirements GTK+ 3 Lua 5.1 or LuaJIT 2 lfs (lua file system) webkit2gtk sqlite3 gstreamer (for video playback) lua socket (for gopher support) Installing Luakit is available on most Linux Distributions and BSD system via their package…
read the full luakit overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is uBlock or luakit more popular?
uBlock has 69,033 GitHub stars and luakit has 2,322. uBlock has the larger community by that measure.
Are uBlock and luakit free?
Both are open source. uBlock is licensed under GPL-3.0 and luakit under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between uBlock and luakit?
uBlock is written in JavaScript and luakit in Lua. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, uBlock or luakit?
Choose uBlock if you want the larger community (69,033 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose luakit if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.