head to head · open source
Zen Browser vs sandbox
Zen Browser has 45,517 GitHub stars, 1,946 forks, 689 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sandbox has 6,262 stars, 563 forks, 71 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Zen Browser leads on adoption by 627% (45,517 vs 6,262 stars). Zen Browser is written in C++ under MPL-2.0; sandbox is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Zen Browser has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, sandbox 9%. Zen Browser 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
| Zen Browser | sandbox | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 46K | ★ 6.3K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C++ | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 563 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Zen Browser if
- You weight community size — 46K stars and counting
- You want the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick sandbox if
- You want the sandbox feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and sandbox fits your workflow better
About Zen Browser
Zen Browser Zen is a firefox based browser with the aim of pushing your productivity to a new level! Download • Website • Documentation • Release Notes Firefox Versions Release Is currently built using Firefox version 155.0.1 ! Twilight Is currently built using Firefox version RC 155.0.1 ! Contributing If you'd like to report a bug, please do so on our GitHub Issues page and for feature requests, you can use GitHub Discussions. Zen is an open source project, and we welcome contributions from the community! Please take a look at the contribution guidelines before getting started! Partners Thanks to all the…
read the full Zen Browser overview →
About sandbox
AIO Sandbox All in One Agent Sandbox Environment 🌐 Browser 💻 Terminal 📁 File 🔧 VSCode 📊 Jupyter 🤖 MCP 🌐 Website      🔌 API      📑 Paper      🌟 Examples      📊 Evaluation    🚀 Quick Start Get up and running in 30 seconds: For users in mainland China: For reproducible deployments, pin a release tag. Replace 1.11.0 with the release you want: These examples intentionally bind the host side to 127.0.0.1 because the sandbox listens on 0.0.0.0 inside the container. For cloud deployment, keep port 8080 private and publish it through a…
read the full sandbox overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Zen Browser or sandbox more popular?
Zen Browser has 45,517 GitHub stars and sandbox has 6,262. Zen Browser has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zen Browser and sandbox free?
Both are open source. Zen Browser is licensed under MPL-2.0 and sandbox under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Zen Browser and sandbox?
Zen Browser is written in C++ and sandbox in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Zen Browser or sandbox?
Choose Zen Browser if you want the larger community (45,517 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose sandbox if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.