Blitz
Hacker ApprovedRanked 3 of 9 browser engines by recommenders
Free Rust browser engine for apps, valued for its modular design and steady progress, though critics warn it lacks JavaScript and is not ready for building apps.
Free Rust browser engine for apps, valued for its modular design and steady progress, though critics warn it lacks JavaScript and is not ready for building apps.
19 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 14
- criticize it
- 5
- approval share
- 74%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 14 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Modular design for app development
“I'm building a web engine specifically targeting application development use cases here”
Comment from 29 Nov 2025 in “Electron vs. Tauri” “Our whole blitz project is designed to be modular exactly for that use-case.”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Why we built Lightpanda in Zig” “the modular browser approach pioneered by Blitz is also promising”
Comment from 13 Jun 2026 in “The state of building user interfaces in Rust” Standard HTML/CSS with native Rust API
“It's a new custom browser engine supporting standard HTML/CSS with a native Rust API”
Comment from 22 Jun 2026 in “Deno Desktop” “that supports features like Flexbox, CSS Grid, CSS variables, media queries, etc”
Comment from 5 Nov 2025 in “Dillo, a multi-platform graphical web browser” Used in real projects and prototypes
“Thanks for all this! I used Blitz a while ago for a product research spike”
Comment from 19 Aug 2026 in “Taffy: A flexible, high-performance, cross-platform UI layout library” “a big blocker for me was video in blitz but i solved it myself”
Comment from 10 Mar 2026 in “So you want to write an "app" (2025)” “brought it all together and rendered pages via”
Comment from 27 Mar 2026 in “Browserception in Rust (WASM and WebGPU)” Active development and promising progress
“I’ve been waiting for something like this to exist for a very long time”
Comment from 22 Mar 2026 in “Blitz – open-source App Store Connect client agents can control” “Come contribute, we're already much further along”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Why we built Lightpanda in Zig” “blitz seems to be coming along nicely”
Comment from 15 Jan 2026 in “Scaling long-running autonomous coding” - Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Why we built Lightpanda in Zig”
- Comment from 2 May 2026 in “This Month in Ladybird - April 2026”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
No JavaScript execution yet
“has layout and rendering but does not have JS execution”
Comment from 22 Apr 2026 in “Kuri – Zig based agent-browser alternative” “and Blitz [1] (the latter of which is no-JS like Dillo)”
Comment from 26 Apr 2026 in “Dillo Browser Release 3.3.0” Not yet recommended for building apps
“we would not yet recommend building apps with it.”
Comment from 8 Aug 2026 in “Kitesurf: Agent-first browser that runs in V8 isolates” “Of course blitz doesn't expose a FFI either”
Comment from 17 May 2026 in “Native all the way, until you need text”
Other browser engines people recommend
The four most recommended other browser engines, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Servo browser engine | 81 | 32 | 72% | 12 | — | Approved |
| WebKit | 33 | 33 | 50% | 12 | — | — |
| BlitzThis page | 14 | 5 | 74% | 10 | — | Approved |
| One Agent One Browser | 12 | 4 | 75% | 2 | — | — |
| WebView2 | 7 | 14 | 33% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
29 of the 30 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I have a working (and not vibe coded) implementation of a "browser engine for apps"”
“But this is absolutely NOT how this site is meant to be used.”
“Thanks for all this! I used Blitz a while ago for a product research spike”
“we would not yet recommend building apps with it.”
“while binary size may be around 10mb, it still baloons to 500mb at runtime for your TODO list example”
“It's a new custom browser engine supporting standard HTML/CSS with a native Rust API”
“the modular browser approach pioneered by Blitz is also promising”
“Of course blitz doesn't expose a FFI either”
“Blitz has good plaintext text input support. But there's no contenteditable (which is what you would need for rich text editing) yet.”
“Both are actually lightweight HTML rendering libraries”
“is getting pretty good too”
“and Blitz [1] (the latter of which is no-JS like Dillo)”
“has layout and rendering but does not have JS execution”
“brought it all together and rendered pages via”
“I’ve been waiting for something like this to exist for a very long time”
“The Blitz UI shows every submission requirement in one place.”
“a big blocker for me was video in blitz but i solved it myself”
“but the deps fucked me up”
“modular approach reminiscent of Blitz but not as radical, like Blitz-lite”
“That project I consider a proper POC of a web engine”
“a real prototype web engine build along radical design choices”
“blitz seems to be coming along nicely”
“the "native renderer" is still an HTML/CSS portable, render engine, not what would typically be called a native renderer”
“thanks for this amazing project”
“Our whole blitz project is designed to be modular exactly for that use-case.”
“Come contribute, we're already much further along”
“I'm building a web engine specifically targeting application development use cases here”
“You've got a head start, are contributing to the ecosystem”
“that supports features like Flexbox, CSS Grid, CSS variables, media queries, etc”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.