head to head · open source
Browser Use vs scrapy-playwright
Browser Use has 118,126 GitHub stars, 13,101 forks, 421 open issues and last shipped yesterday. scrapy-playwright has 1,458 stars, 163 forks, 22 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Browser Use leads on adoption by 8,002% (118,126 vs 1,458 stars). Browser Use is written in Python under MIT; scrapy-playwright is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause. Browser Use has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, scrapy-playwright 11%. Browser Use was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (headless-browser, 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 | scrapy-playwright | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 118K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | MIT | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-10-16 | 2026-10-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 13K | ⑂ 163 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Browser Use if
- You weight community size — 118K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick scrapy-playwright if
- You want the scrapy-playwright feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and scrapy-playwright 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 scrapy-playwright
scrapy playwright is a Scrapy download handler that performs requests using Playwright for Python, so existing Scrapy crawlers can render pages that require JavaScript — built for Python developers who want browser grade rendering inside a normal Scrapy workflow.
read the full scrapy-playwright overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Browser Use or scrapy-playwright more popular?
Browser Use has 118,126 GitHub stars and scrapy-playwright has 1,458. Browser Use has the larger community by that measure.
Are Browser Use and scrapy-playwright free?
Both are open source. Browser Use is licensed under MIT and scrapy-playwright under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Browser Use and scrapy-playwright?
Browser Use is written in Python and scrapy-playwright in Python. 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 scrapy-playwright?
Choose Browser Use if you want the larger community (118,126 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose scrapy-playwright if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.