head to head · open source
Browser Use vs crawlee
Browser Use has 115,379 GitHub stars, 12,695 forks, 421 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. crawlee has 25,841 stars, 1,673 forks, 135 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Browser Use leads on adoption by 346% (115,379 vs 25,841 stars). Browser Use is written in Python under MIT; crawlee is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Browser Use has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, crawlee 6%. Browser Use was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (playwright), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Browser Use | crawlee | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 115K | ★ 26K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 13K | ⑂ 1.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Browser Use if
- You weight community size — 115K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick crawlee if
- You want the crawlee feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and crawlee fits your workflow better
About Browser Use
Browser Use is an open source Python library and hosted platform that enables AI agents to control web browsers programmatically. It lives in the AI agent and browser automation ecosystem, built on Playwright and designed to let LLMs interact with websites as a human would—clicking, filling forms, solving CAPTCHAs, and navigating dynamic interfaces. The project provides three deployment paths: a fully hosted cloud service, a command line interface for existing agents, and a local Python library for custom integrations.
read the full Browser Use overview →
About crawlee
Crawlee is a web scraping and browser automation library for Node.js, written in TypeScript and published on npm as the crawlee package. It lives in the JavaScript and TypeScript ecosystem, and it covers crawling and scraping end to end: fetching pages, following links, extracting data, and storing the results to disk or to the cloud. The project also has a Python counterpart, Crawlee for Python, maintained alongside it by Apify.
read the full crawlee overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Browser Use or crawlee more popular?
Browser Use has 115,379 GitHub stars and crawlee has 25,841. Browser Use has the larger community by that measure.
Are Browser Use and crawlee free?
Both are open source. Browser Use is licensed under MIT and crawlee under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Browser Use and crawlee?
Browser Use is written in Python and crawlee in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Browser Use or crawlee?
Choose Browser Use if you want the larger community (115,379 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose crawlee if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.