head to head · open source
Zen Browser vs web-archives
Zen Browser has 45,517 GitHub stars, 1,946 forks, 689 open issues and last shipped yesterday. web-archives has 1,611 stars, 127 forks, 28 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Zen Browser leads on adoption by 2,725% (45,517 vs 1,611 stars). Zen Browser is written in C++ under MPL-2.0; web-archives is written in JavaScript under GPL-3.0. Zen Browser has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, web-archives 8%. 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 | web-archives | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 46K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C++ | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-06-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 127 |
| 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 web-archives if
- You want the web-archives feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and web-archives 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 web-archives
Web Archives Sponsors Lenso.ai Explore billions of images from all around the web. Search for places, people, duplicates, and more. Supporting the Project Web Archives is an open source project made possible thanks to a community of awesome supporters. If you'd like to support the continued development of the extension, please consider contributing with Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin. Description Web Archives is a browser extension that enables you to find archived and cached versions of web pages, and comes with support for various search engines. Searches can be initiated from the context menu and the browser…
read the full web-archives overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Zen Browser or web-archives more popular?
Zen Browser has 45,517 GitHub stars and web-archives has 1,611. Zen Browser has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zen Browser and web-archives free?
Both are open source. Zen Browser is licensed under MPL-2.0 and web-archives under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Zen Browser and web-archives?
Zen Browser is written in C++ and web-archives in JavaScript. 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 web-archives?
Choose Zen Browser if you want the larger community (45,517 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose web-archives if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.