head to head · open source
Zen Browser vs slate
Zen Browser has 45,517 GitHub stars, 1,946 forks, 689 open issues and last shipped yesterday. slate has 31,747 stars, 3,306 forks, 653 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. Zen Browser leads on adoption by 43% (45,517 vs 31,747 stars). Zen Browser is written in C++ under MPL-2.0; slate is written in TypeScript under MIT. Zen Browser has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, slate 10%. 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 | slate | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 46K | ★ 32K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | C++ | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 3.3K |
| 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 slate if
- You want the slate feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and slate 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 slate
A completely customizable framework for building rich text editors. Why? · Principles · Demo · Examples · Documentation · Contributing! Slate lets you build rich, intuitive editors like those in Medium, Dropbox Paper or Google Docs—which are becoming table stakes for applications on the web—without your codebase getting mired in complexity. It can do this because all of its logic is implemented with a series of plugins, so you aren't ever constrained by what is or isn't in "core". You can think of it like a pluggable implementation of contenteditable built on top of React. It was inspired by libraries like…
read the full slate overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Zen Browser or slate more popular?
Zen Browser has 45,517 GitHub stars and slate has 31,747. Zen Browser has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zen Browser and slate free?
Both are open source. Zen Browser is licensed under MPL-2.0 and slate under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Zen Browser and slate?
Zen Browser is written in C++ and slate 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, Zen Browser or slate?
Choose Zen Browser if you want the larger community (45,517 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose slate if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.