head to head · open source
changedetection.io vs crawlab
changedetection.io has 34,295 GitHub stars, 2,063 forks, 385 open issues and last shipped yesterday. crawlab has 12,273 stars, 1,890 forks, 166 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. changedetection.io leads on adoption by 179% (34,295 vs 12,273 stars). changedetection.io is written in Python under Apache-2.0; crawlab is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause. changedetection.io has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, crawlab 15%. changedetection.io 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
| changedetection.io | crawlab | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 34K | ★ 12K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-02-10 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.1K | ⑂ 1.9K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick changedetection.io if
- You weight community size — 34K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick crawlab if
- You want the crawlab feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and crawlab fits your workflow better
About changedetection.io
changedetection.io is an open source website change detection and web page monitoring tool written in Python and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It watches URLs, detects when their content changes, and sends alerts through channels such as Discord, Email, Slack, Telegram, and Webhook. The project lives in the Data & Analytics / Data Extraction & Web Scraping ecosystem, carries more than 34,000 stars and 2,000 forks on GitHub, and has been developed for roughly six years. It is designed to be self hosted, and the same codebase also backs a hosted subscription service offered by the maintainers.…
read the full changedetection.io overview →
About crawlab
Crawlab is a BSD 3 Clause licensed, Go based distributed web crawler admin platform that manages spiders regardless of the language or framework they are written in, built for teams that run many crawlers and need one place to schedule, monitor, and inspect them.
read the full crawlab overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is changedetection.io or crawlab more popular?
changedetection.io has 34,295 GitHub stars and crawlab has 12,273. changedetection.io has the larger community by that measure.
Are changedetection.io and crawlab free?
Both are open source. changedetection.io is licensed under Apache-2.0 and crawlab under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between changedetection.io and crawlab?
changedetection.io is written in Python and crawlab in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, changedetection.io or crawlab?
Choose changedetection.io if you want the larger community (34,295 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose crawlab if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.