head to head · open source
changedetection.io vs node-crawler
changedetection.io has 34,295 GitHub stars, 2,063 forks, 385 open issues and last shipped yesterday. node-crawler has 6,792 stars, 864 forks, 29 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. changedetection.io leads on adoption by 405% (34,295 vs 6,792 stars). changedetection.io is written in Python under Apache-2.0; node-crawler is written in TypeScript under MIT. changedetection.io has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, node-crawler 13%. 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 | node-crawler | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 34K | ★ 6.8K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-06-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.1K | ⑂ 864 |
| 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 node-crawler if
- You want the node-crawler feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and node-crawler 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 node-crawler
node crawler is a web crawler and spider library for Node.js that pairs a request queue with a server side DOM. It lives in the Node.js ecosystem and is published to npm under the package name crawler . The project is written in TypeScript and released under the MIT license, with 6,792 stars, 864 forks, and 29 open issues at the time of writing. The repository has been in development for 16 years and was last pushed on 18 June 2026. Version 2 is described as the advanced and TypeScript version of the original node crawler, and the topic list — cheerio, crawler, extract data, javascript, jquery, nodejs, spider — r…
read the full node-crawler overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is changedetection.io or node-crawler more popular?
changedetection.io has 34,295 GitHub stars and node-crawler has 6,792. changedetection.io has the larger community by that measure.
Are changedetection.io and node-crawler free?
Both are open source. changedetection.io is licensed under Apache-2.0 and node-crawler under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between changedetection.io and node-crawler?
changedetection.io is written in Python and node-crawler 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, changedetection.io or node-crawler?
Choose changedetection.io if you want the larger community (34,295 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose node-crawler if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.