# Lightpanda vs Crawl4AI

> Two self-hosted projects, compared on the numbers selfhost.directory tracks live: score, popularity, release cadence and setup effort.

| | Lightpanda | Crawl4AI |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 79/100 | 87/100 ✓ |
| Rank in category | #1 of 11 in Browser Automation | #2 of 16 in Web Scraping |
| GitHub stars | 37 085 | 86 443 ✓ |
| Stars, last 30 days | +284 | +2 273 ✓ |
| Stable releases, 12 months | 11 ✓ | 9 |
| Latest release | 1.0.2 · 22 Oct 2026 ✓ | v0.9.5 · 14 Oct 2026 |
| Setup | Easy ✓ | Moderate |
| Official Docker image | Yes | Yes |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Main language | Zig | Python |

## Which one should you pick?

Crawl4AI scores 87/100 against 79/100 for Lightpanda, so it is the safer default.

Lightpanda ships more often: 11 stable releases in the past year, against 9 for Crawl4AI.

If you want the quickest setup, Lightpanda is easier to run; Crawl4AI needs more configuration.

Crawl4AI is growing faster right now (+2 273 stars in 30 days).

## Details

- [Lightpanda](https://selfhost.directory/project/browser) (markdown: https://selfhost.directory/project/browser.md)
- [Crawl4AI](https://selfhost.directory/project/crawl4ai) (markdown: https://selfhost.directory/project/crawl4ai.md)

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Source: https://selfhost.directory/compare/browser-vs-crawl4ai