head to head · open source
Browser Use vs crawlee
Browser Use has 119,977 GitHub stars, 13,371 forks, 421 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. crawlee has 26,327 stars, 1,742 forks, 135 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Browser Use leads on adoption by 356% (119,977 vs 26,327 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 7%. crawlee 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Browser Use | crawlee | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 120K | ★ 26K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 13K | ⑂ 1.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Browser Use if
- You weight community size — 120K 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
Navigate the web like a human does. Find an available slot, pick a date and time, handle the CAPTCHA, and book a driving test. Explore more demos and prompts ↗ Which Browser Use do I need? Path 1: Fully Hosted Cloud: Scale up with a fully hosted agent and browser. Path 2: CLI: Automate your own browser tasks. Path 3: Python Library: Run the open source Browser Use agent locally from your own code. Quickstart Path 1: Fully Hosted Cloud Scale browser automation with our hosted agent, stealth browsers, and infrastructure for profiles, recordings, and data policies. Get started with the API ↗ New Google, GitHub, or…
read the full Browser Use overview →
About crawlee
A web scraping and browser automation library Crawlee covers your crawling and scraping end to end and helps you build reliable scrapers. Fast. Your crawlers will appear human like and fly under the radar of modern bot protections even with the default configuration. Crawlee gives you the tools to crawl the web for links, scrape data, and store it to disk or cloud while staying configurable to suit your project's needs. Crawlee is available as the crawlee NPM package. 👉 View full documentation, guides and examples on the Crawlee project website 👈 Do you prefer 🐍 Python instead of JavaScript? 👉 Checkout…
read the full crawlee overview →
More in Data & Analytics
Related comparisons
More Data Extraction & Web Scraping projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Data Extraction & Web Scraping field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Browser Use or crawlee more popular?
Browser Use has 119,977 GitHub stars and crawlee has 26,327. 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 (119,977 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose crawlee if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.