Lightpanda

license

AGPL-3.0(OSI, copyleft)

source

public(the repository builds the browser binary)

core-gated

ungated(the hosted Lightpanda cloud is a separate managed service, not a carve-out of the published engine)

The repository states its own terms canonically. LICENSING.md names the default license for the project as AGPL-3.0-only, spelled per the SPDX License List, the LICENSE body is the AGPL-3.0 text, and the GitHub API reports the same spdx_id, so all three agree and nothing is appended after the license text. The repository builds the browser binary, and the hosted Lightpanda service is a managed offering sold beside the engine rather than functionality withheld from it, so the core is ungated. Placing AGPL in the OSI tier beside Apache rather than a rung below it is the ladder's standing rule - a copyleft obligation binds whoever redistributes and caps neither who may use the software nor at what scale - and it is a fact about AGPL rather than evidence about this product.

• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lightpanda-io/browser/main/LICENSING.md recorded 2026-08-30

  LICENSING.md body: 'The default license for this project is AGPL-3.0-only', naming licenses per the SPDX License List.

• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lightpanda-io/browser/main/LICENSE recorded 2026-08-30

  LICENSE body is the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 text.

• https://api.github.com/repos/lightpanda-io/browser recorded 2026-08-30

  Repo metadata - license spdx_id AGPL-3.0, archived false, 34,318 stars - for lightpanda-io/browser.

• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lightpanda-io/browser/main/README.md recorded 2026-08-30

  README documents a headless browser built from this repository, driven over the Chrome DevTools Protocol, with no enterprise directory, license key or withheld component described beside it.

34,318 GitHub stars, which lands in the >10K stars band, level 3, and the stars scale caps at 3. Lightpanda ships as a binary rather than as a package on PyPI or npm, so no download count exists for it and the stars fallback is the only instrument available. The band should be read as a floor rather than a measurement.

• https://api.github.com/repos/lightpanda-io/browser recorded 2026-08-30

  Repo metadata - stargazers_count = 34,318 - for lightpanda-io/browser.

Banded one below browserbase, which provides session management, proxying, stealth and observability around a browser as a managed platform. Lightpanda provides the engine and the CDP surface and leaves the platform to the caller, and its Web API coverage is still partial. The comparison is dated to when the anchor was last confirmed rather than to this sweep, because a relative band is only as fresh as the record it is relative to.

• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lightpanda-io/browser/main/README.md recorded 2026-08-30

  README documents a headless browser written in Zig implementing the DOM and a JavaScript runtime through V8 with no rendering, exposing the Chrome DevTools Protocol for Playwright and Puppeteer clients, and notes that Web API coverage is partial and in progress.