head to head · open source
Zen Browser vs zip.js
Zen Browser has 45,517 GitHub stars, 1,946 forks, 689 open issues and last shipped yesterday. zip.js has 3,905 stars, 546 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 12 days ago. Zen Browser leads on adoption by 1,066% (45,517 vs 3,905 stars). Zen Browser is written in C++ under MPL-2.0; zip.js is written in JavaScript under BSD-3-Clause. Zen Browser has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, zip.js 14%. 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 | zip.js | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 46K | ★ 3.9K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | C++ | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-22 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 546 |
| 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 zip.js if
- You want the zip.js feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and zip.js 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 zip.js
Introduction zip.js is a JavaScript open source library (BSD 3 Clause license) for compressing and decompressing zip files. It has been designed to handle large amounts of data. It supports notably multi core compression, native compression with compression streams, pluggable compression engines, archives larger than 4GB with Zip64, split zip files, data encryption, incremental writing, and Deflate64 decompression. Demo See Documentation See here for more info: Examples Hello world Run the code on JSFiddle: Hello world with the filesystem API The filesystem API stores the entries in a tree instead of a flat…
read the full zip.js overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Zen Browser or zip.js more popular?
Zen Browser has 45,517 GitHub stars and zip.js has 3,905. Zen Browser has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zen Browser and zip.js free?
Both are open source. Zen Browser is licensed under MPL-2.0 and zip.js under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Zen Browser and zip.js?
Zen Browser is written in C++ and zip.js 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 zip.js?
Choose Zen Browser if you want the larger community (45,517 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose zip.js if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.