head to head · open source
changedetection.io vs faster-than-requests
changedetection.io has 34,312 GitHub stars, 2,064 forks, 385 open issues and last shipped yesterday. faster-than-requests has 1,128 stars, 89 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 12 days ago. changedetection.io leads on adoption by 2,942% (34,312 vs 1,128 stars). changedetection.io is written in Python under Apache-2.0; faster-than-requests is written in Nim under MIT. changedetection.io has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, faster-than-requests 8%. changedetection.io was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (web-scraping), 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
| changedetection.io | faster-than-requests | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 34K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Nim |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-07 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.1K | ⑂ 89 |
| 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 faster-than-requests if
- You want the faster-than-requests feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Nim
- You evaluated both and faster-than-requests 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 faster-than-requests
faster than requests is an MIT licensed Python 3 HTTP client written in Nim that keeps a requests style call surface while adding a built in multi threaded web scraper, shipping as a single file with no direct dependencies, and it is aimed at developers doing high volume scraping or downloads who find python requests, urllib3, or PyCURL too slow.
read the full faster-than-requests overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is changedetection.io or faster-than-requests more popular?
changedetection.io has 34,312 GitHub stars and faster-than-requests has 1,128. changedetection.io has the larger community by that measure.
Are changedetection.io and faster-than-requests free?
Both are open source. changedetection.io is licensed under Apache-2.0 and faster-than-requests under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between changedetection.io and faster-than-requests?
changedetection.io is written in Python and faster-than-requests in Nim. 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 faster-than-requests?
Choose changedetection.io if you want the larger community (34,312 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose faster-than-requests if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.