head to head · open source
Browser Use vs trawl
Browser Use has 119,977 GitHub stars, 13,371 forks, 421 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. trawl has 1,102 stars, 64 forks, 7 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Browser Use leads on adoption by 10,787% (119,977 vs 1,102 stars). Browser Use is written in Python under MIT; trawl is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. Browser Use has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, trawl 6%. trawl was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | trawl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 120K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 13K | ⑂ 64 |
| 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 trawl if
- You want the trawl feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and trawl 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 trawl
TRAWL Welcome to TRAWL ! 👋 Self hosted web scraping engine with best effort JS challenge and CAPTCHA solving.\ Dedicated flows for Cloudflare, Akamai Bot Manager, and Imperva/Incapsula (best effort), plus Turnstile, reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha, GeeTest, ALTCHA, and Friendly Captcha.\ Much faster and more reliable FlareSolverr & Byparr alternative and drop in replacement for your \ arr stack. Features 2 6x faster compared to FlareSolverr or Byparr it returns much faster with higher success rate 4 tier execution plain HTTP fetch → cached browser session → fresh challenge solve → residential proxy Challenge aware…
read the full trawl overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Browser Use or trawl more popular?
Browser Use has 119,977 GitHub stars and trawl has 1,102. Browser Use has the larger community by that measure.
Are Browser Use and trawl free?
Both are open source. Browser Use is licensed under MIT and trawl under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Browser Use and trawl?
Browser Use is written in Python and trawl 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 trawl?
Choose Browser Use if you want the larger community (119,977 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose trawl if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.