Firecrawl vs Lightpanda
Learn how Firecrawl and Lightpanda differ in their key features, development activity, technology
stack and community adoption, so you can decide which of these scraping platforms & sdks is best for you.
Learn how Firecrawl and Lightpanda differ in their key features, development activity, technology stack and community adoption, so you can decide which of these scraping platforms & sdks is best for you.
Firecrawl
Last 30 days
Last commit
9 hours agoRepository age
2 yearsVersion
v2.11.0License
AGPL-3.0Self-hosted
YesRepository
mendableai/firecrawl
Lightpanda
Last 30 days
Last commit
10 hours agoRepository age
4 yearsLicense
AGPL-3.0Repository
lightpanda-io/browser
Detailed Comparison
Firecrawl appears to have several advantages over Lightpanda, particularly in popularity, growth and features. Consider your specific needs regarding popularity, growth, activity, technology, maturity, licensing and features when making your decision.
Firecrawl appears to have several advantages over Lightpanda, particularly in popularity, growth and features. Consider your specific needs regarding popularity, growth, activity, technology, maturity, licensing and features when making your decision.
Community & Popularity
Firecrawl significantly outpaces Lightpanda in community adoption with 169,544 stars compared to 34,116 stars on GitHub. This 5.0x difference suggests Firecrawl has a much larger and more active community. In terms of developer contributions, Firecrawl has 9,461 forks, indicating strong developer engagement.
Growth Momentum
Firecrawl is growing faster, adding 16,068 stars in the last 30 days (+10%) against adding 2,082 stars for Lightpanda (+6.5%). Firecrawl is both larger and pulling further ahead.
Development Activity
Both projects show recent activity, with Firecrawl last updated 9 hours ago and Lightpanda 10 hours ago.
Technology Stack
Both tools share common technology foundations, being built with Golang, Rust. However, they differ in their additional technology choices: Firecrawl uses JavaScript, CSS, Bash, Typescript, JSX, Python while Lightpanda leverages Zig.
Project Maturity
Lightpanda has been in development longer, starting 4 years ago, compared to Firecrawl which began 2 years ago. This 1.2-year head start suggests Lightpanda may have more mature features and established processes.
Licensing
Both projects use the AGPL-3.0 license, providing identical terms for usage and distribution.
Use Cases & Features
Both tools serve similar use cases in Scraping Platforms & SDKs. However, they also have distinct specializations: Firecrawl also focuses on Web Crawlers while Lightpanda extends into Browser Automation for AI, Browser Automation.
Hosting & Deployment
Firecrawl provides self-hosting options for complete data control and customization, while Lightpanda may be primarily cloud-based or require different deployment approaches.
Capture – Capture screenshots, generate PDFs, scrape content, extract metadata, and automate browsers with one API.