https://github.com/lightpanda-io/browser
Lightpanda: the headless browser designed for AI and automation
https://github.com/lightpanda-io/browser
browser browser-automation cdp headless playwright puppeteer zig
Last synced: 2 days ago
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Lightpanda: the headless browser designed for AI and automation
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/lightpanda-io/browser
- Owner: lightpanda-io
- License: agpl-3.0
- Created: 2023-02-07T15:19:34.000Z (about 2 years ago)
- Default Branch: main
- Last Pushed: 2025-04-10T10:27:24.000Z (4 days ago)
- Last Synced: 2025-04-10T10:50:12.759Z (4 days ago)
- Topics: browser, browser-automation, cdp, headless, playwright, puppeteer, zig
- Language: Zig
- Homepage: https://lightpanda.io
- Size: 2.53 MB
- Stars: 8,005
- Watchers: 32
- Forks: 182
- Open Issues: 73
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- Contributing: CONTRIBUTING.md
- License: LICENSE
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README
Lightpanda Browser
[](https://github.com/lightpanda-io/browser/blob/main/LICENSE)
[](https://twitter.com/lightpanda_io)
[](https://github.com/lightpanda-io/browser)
Lightpanda is the open-source browser made for headless usage:
- Javascript execution
- Support of Web APIs (partial, WIP)
- Compatible with Playwright, Puppeteer through CDP (WIP)
Fast web automation for AI agents, LLM training, scraping and testing:
- Ultra-low memory footprint (9x less than Chrome)
- Exceptionally fast execution (11x faster than Chrome)
- Instant startup
[
](https://github.com/lightpanda-io/demo)
[
](https://github.com/lightpanda-io/demo)
_Puppeteer requesting 100 pages from a local website on a AWS EC2 m5.large instance.
See [benchmark details](https://github.com/lightpanda-io/demo)._
## Quick start
### Install from the nightly builds
You can download the last binary from the [nightly
builds](https://github.com/lightpanda-io/browser/releases/tag/nightly) for
Linux x86_64 and MacOS aarch64.
*For linux*
```console
curl -L -o lightpanda https://github.com/lightpanda-io/browser/releases/download/nightly/lightpanda-x86_64-linux && \
chmod a+x ./lightpanda
```
*For MacOS*
```console
curl -L -o lightpanda https://github.com/lightpanda-io/browser/releases/download/nightly/lightpanda-aarch64-macos && \
chmod a+x ./lightpanda
```
### Dump a URL
```console
./lightpanda fetch --dump https://lightpanda.io
```
```console
info(browser): GET https://lightpanda.io/ http.Status.ok
info(browser): fetch script https://api.website.lightpanda.io/js/script.js: http.Status.ok
info(browser): eval remote https://api.website.lightpanda.io/js/script.js: TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'pushState')
```
### Start a CDP server
```console
./lightpanda serve --host 127.0.0.1 --port 9222
```
```console
info(websocket): starting blocking worker to listen on 127.0.0.1:9222
info(server): accepting new conn...
```
Once the CDP server started, you can run a Puppeteer script by configuring the
`browserWSEndpoint`.
```js
'use strict'
import puppeteer from 'puppeteer-core';
// use browserWSEndpoint to pass the Lightpanda's CDP server address.
const browser = await puppeteer.connect({
browserWSEndpoint: "ws://127.0.0.1:9222",
});
// The rest of your script remains the same.
const context = await browser.createBrowserContext();
const page = await context.newPage();
// Dump all the links from the page.
await page.goto('https://wikipedia.com/');
const links = await page.evaluate(() => {
return Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('a')).map(row => {
return row.getAttribute('href');
});
});
console.log(links);
await page.close();
await context.close();
await browser.disconnect();
```
### Telemetry
By default, Lightpanda collects and sends usage telemetry. This can be disabled by setting an environment variable `LIGHTPANDA_DISABLE_TELEMETRY=true`. You can read Lightpanda's privacy policy at: [https://lightpanda.io/privacy-policy](https://lightpanda.io/privacy-policy).
## Status
Lightpanda is still a work in progress and is currently at a Beta stage.
:warning: You should expect most websites to fail or crash.
Here are the key features we have implemented:
- [x] HTTP loader
- [x] HTML parser and DOM tree (based on Netsurf libs)
- [x] Javascript support (v8)
- [x] Basic DOM APIs
- [x] Ajax
- [x] XHR API
- [x] Fetch API
- [x] DOM dump
- [x] Basic CDP/websockets server
NOTE: There are hundreds of Web APIs. Developing a browser (even just for headless mode) is a huge task. Coverage will increase over time.
You can also follow the progress of our Javascript support in our dedicated [zig-js-runtime](https://github.com/lightpanda-io/zig-js-runtime#development) project.
## Build from sources
### Prerequisites
Lightpanda is written with [Zig](https://ziglang.org/) `0.14.0`. You have to
install it with the right version in order to build the project.
Lightpanda also depends on
[zig-js-runtime](https://github.com/lightpanda-io/zig-js-runtime/) (with v8),
[Netsurf libs](https://www.netsurf-browser.org/) and
[Mimalloc](https://microsoft.github.io/mimalloc).
To be able to build the v8 engine for zig-js-runtime, you have to install some libs:
For Debian/Ubuntu based Linux:
```
sudo apt install xz-utils \
python3 ca-certificates git \
pkg-config libglib2.0-dev \
gperf libexpat1-dev \
cmake clang
```
For MacOS, you only need cmake:
```
brew install cmake
```
### Install and build dependencies
#### All in one build
You can run `make install` to install deps all in one (or `make install-dev` if you need the development versions).
Be aware that the build task is very long and cpu consuming, as you will build from sources all dependencies, including the v8 Javascript engine.
#### Step by step build dependency
The project uses git submodules for dependencies.
To init or update the submodules in the `vendor/` directory:
```
make install-submodule
```
**iconv**
libiconv is an internationalization library used by Netsurf.
```
make install-libiconv
```
**Netsurf libs**
Netsurf libs are used for HTML parsing and DOM tree generation.
```
make install-netsurf
```
For dev env, use `make install-netsurf-dev`.
**Mimalloc**
Mimalloc is used as a C memory allocator.
```
make install-mimalloc
```
For dev env, use `make install-mimalloc-dev`.
Note: when Mimalloc is built in dev mode, you can dump memory stats with the
env var `MIMALLOC_SHOW_STATS=1`. See
[https://microsoft.github.io/mimalloc/environment.html](https://microsoft.github.io/mimalloc/environment.html).
**zig-js-runtime**
Our own Zig/Javascript runtime, which includes the v8 Javascript engine.
This build task is very long and cpu consuming, as you will build v8 from sources.
```
make install-zig-js-runtime
```
For dev env, use `make install-zig-js-runtime-dev`.
## Test
### Unit Tests
You can test Lightpanda by running `make test`.
### Web Platform Tests
Lightpanda is tested against the standardized [Web Platform
Tests](https://web-platform-tests.org/).
The relevant tests cases are committed in a [dedicated repository](https://github.com/lightpanda-io/wpt) which is fetched by the `make install-submodule` command.
All the tests cases executed are located in the `tests/wpt` sub-directory.
For reference, you can easily execute a WPT test case with your browser via
[wpt.live](https://wpt.live).
#### Run WPT test suite
To run all the tests:
```
make wpt
```
Or one specific test:
```
make wpt Node-childNodes.html
```
#### Add a new WPT test case
We add new relevant tests cases files when we implemented changes in Lightpanda.
To add a new test, copy the file you want from the [WPT
repo](https://github.com/web-platform-tests/wpt) into the `tests/wpt` directory.
:warning: Please keep the original directory tree structure of `tests/wpt`.
## Contributing
Lightpanda accepts pull requests through GitHub.
You have to sign our [CLA](CLA.md) during the pull request process otherwise
we're not able to accept your contributions.
## Why?
### Javascript execution is mandatory for the modern web
In the good old days, scraping a webpage was as easy as making an HTTP request, cURL-like. It’s not possible anymore, because Javascript is everywhere, like it or not:
- Ajax, Single Page App, infinite loading, “click to display”, instant search, etc.
- JS web frameworks: React, Vue, Angular & others
### Chrome is not the right tool
If we need Javascript, why not use a real web browser? Take a huge desktop application, hack it, and run it on the server. Hundreds or thousands of instances of Chrome if you use it at scale. Are you sure it’s such a good idea?
- Heavy on RAM and CPU, expensive to run
- Hard to package, deploy and maintain at scale
- Bloated, lots of features are not useful in headless usage
### Lightpanda is built for performance
If we want both Javascript and performance in a true headless browser, we need to start from scratch. Not another iteration of Chromium, really from a blank page. Crazy right? But that’s what we did:
- Not based on Chromium, Blink or WebKit
- Low-level system programming language (Zig) with optimisations in mind
- Opinionated: without graphical rendering