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Lightpanda avatar

Lightpanda

Lightweight headless browser written from scratch for automation

  • Agent frameworks and tools
  • Developer tools
View on GitHub
Website

What it is

A headless web browser built in Zig rather than forked from Chromium or WebKit, using far less memory and time per page than headless Chrome. It exposes a Chrome DevTools Protocol server and WebDriver BiDi so existing Puppeteer and Playwright scripts can connect to it, and can dump pages as HTML, markdown, PDF, or structured data from the command line. Developers running scrapers, crawlers, and AI agents use it to cut infrastructure costs, and a built-in agent mode drives the browser from plain-English instructions and exports replayable scripts.

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Facts

Stars
36,779 GitHub stars.
36,779

Forks
1,774
Commits
10,831
Contributors
76
Language
Zig
License
AGPL-3.0
Last commit
Oct 20, 2026
On GitHub since
February 2023
First release
July 2024
Platforms
macOS, Linux, CLI, self-hosted
Self-hostable
Yes
Alternative to
Browserless
Tags
  • web-browser
  • browser-automation
  • testing
  • ai-agents
  • web-scraping

Last synced from GitHub on Oct 20, 2026

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What people are saying

Updated Oct 21, 2026
  • Hacker NewsShow HN: Lightpanda, an open-source headless browser in ZigJan 24, 2025 · 319 points · 137 comments (opens Hacker News in a new tab)
  • Hacker NewsWhy we built Lightpanda in ZigDec 5, 2025 · 212 points · 187 comments (opens Hacker News in a new tab)
  • Hacker NewsLightpanda migrate DOM implementation to ZigJan 12, 2026 · 199 points · 143 comments (opens Hacker News in a new tab)
  • Hacker NewsLightpanda: Headless browser designed for AI and automationJan 24, 2025 · 154 points · 1 comment (opens Hacker News in a new tab)
  • Hacker NewsLightPanda 1.0Oct 2, 2026 · 26 points · 6 comments (opens Hacker News in a new tab)
  • Hacker NewsLightpanda headless browser written in ZigOct 16, 2026 · 23 points · 3 comments (opens Hacker News in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“lightpanda.io Lightpanda (WIP headless browser from scratch) explicitly mentions playwright as use case now. Should be able to benefit in…”Apr 29, 2025 · 5 likes · 1 reply (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Hacker NewsLightpanda – The Headless BrowserJan 18, 2025 · 4 points · 2 comments (opens Hacker News in a new tab)
  • Hacker NewsLightpanda: Fast headless browser from scratch in Zig for AI and automationAug 14, 2025 · 5 points · 0 comments (opens Hacker News in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“I really hope that we can replace it with lightpanda.io soonish”Oct 26, 2025 · 3 likes · 1 reply (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“Lightpanda | The headless browser”Apr 13, 2025 · 4 likes · 0 replies (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“Found Lightpanda — headless browser in Zig built for AI and automation. Been fighting Chrome's CDP lockdown lately and this looks like the replacement I needed.”Mar 20, 2026 · 2 likes · 1 reply (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“I’m really excited about Lightpanda as a potential solution for browser tests.”Mar 5, 2026 · 2 likes · 1 reply (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Hacker NewsLightpanda: the headless browser designed for AI and automationDec 11, 2025 · 3 points · 0 comments (opens Hacker News in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“Lightpanda: the headless browser designed for AI and automation Written in Zig, with a much lower footprint than headless chrome, has its own scripting to…”Jul 30, 2026 · 1 like · 1 reply (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Hacker NewsThe first browser for machines, not humansMar 24, 2026 · 2 points · 0 comments (opens Hacker News in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“New in Lightpanda this week 🧵 1. Accessibility.queryAXTree over CDP 2. External stylesheets fetched and parsed 3. fetch gets a --json flag All in the latest…”May 21, 2026 · 0 likes · 1 reply (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“Lightpanda is a headless browser built for AI automation workloads.”Mar 25, 2026 · 0 likes · 1 reply (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“I found this interesting GitHub project on Lightpanda - a headless browser built in Zig for AI agents and web automation, with support for JavaScript-heavy…”Mar 18, 2026 · 1 like · 0 replies (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“lightpanda-io/browser Lightpanda: the headless browser designed for AI and automation Lightpanda Browser lightpanda.io Lightpanda is the open-source browser…”Mar 14, 2026 · 1 like · 0 replies (opens Bluesky in a new tab)