head to head · open source
Browser Use vs webclaw
Browser Use has 119,977 GitHub stars, 13,371 forks, 421 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. webclaw has 2,425 stars, 242 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Browser Use leads on adoption by 4,848% (119,977 vs 2,425 stars). Browser Use is written in Python under MIT; webclaw is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0. Browser Use has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, webclaw 10%. webclaw was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (ai-agents, llm, mcp), 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 | webclaw | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 120K | ★ 2.4K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 13K | ⑂ 242 |
| 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 webclaw if
- You want the webclaw feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and webclaw 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 webclaw
English 简体中文 webclaw Turn websites into clean markdown, JSON, and LLM ready context. CLI, MCP server, REST API, and SDKs for AI agents and RAG pipelines. Most web scraping tools give your agent one of two bad outputs: a blocked page, login wall, or empty app shell raw HTML full of nav, scripts, styling, ads, and duplicated boilerplate webclaw.io is the hosted web extraction API for webclaw. This repo contains the open source CLI, MCP server, extraction engine, and self hostable server. webclaw turns a URL into clean content your tools can actually use. Use it from the terminal, wire it into Claude/Cursor through…
read the full webclaw overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Browser Use or webclaw more popular?
Browser Use has 119,977 GitHub stars and webclaw has 2,425. Browser Use has the larger community by that measure.
Are Browser Use and webclaw free?
Both are open source. Browser Use is licensed under MIT and webclaw under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Browser Use and webclaw?
Browser Use is written in Python and webclaw in Rust. 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 webclaw?
Choose Browser Use if you want the larger community (119,977 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose webclaw if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.