head to head · open source
changedetection.io vs spider
changedetection.io has 35,461 GitHub stars, 2,194 forks, 385 open issues and last shipped yesterday. spider has 2,815 stars, 321 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. changedetection.io leads on adoption by 1,160% (35,461 vs 2,815 stars). changedetection.io is written in Python under Apache-2.0; spider is written in Rust under MIT. changedetection.io has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, spider 11%. 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 | spider | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 35K | ★ 2.8K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 321 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick changedetection.io if
- You weight community size — 35K 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 spider if
- You want the spider feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and spider fits your workflow better
About changedetection.io
Detect Website Changes Automatically — Monitor Web Page Changes in Real Time Monitor websites for updates — get notified via Discord, Email, Slack, Telegram, Webhook and many more. Detect web page content changes and get instant alerts. Ideal for monitoring price changes, content edits, conditional changes and more. [![Release Version][release shield]][release link] [![Docker Pulls][docker pulls]][docker link] [![License][license shield]](LICENSE.md) Get started with website page change monitoring straight away. Don't have time? Try our $8.99/month subscription, use our proxies and support! , half the price of…
read the full changedetection.io overview →
About spider
Spider The fastest web crawler and scraper for Rust. spider.cloud · Guides · Docs · Examples · Discord Spider is a concurrency first crawling engine written in Rust. It streams pages as they arrive, renders JavaScript only on pages that need it, and scales from a single script to a distributed fleet without changing your code. The same engine runs Spider Cloud, so you can prototype locally and move to managed infrastructure with one config change. Start in the cloud The hardest part of crawling at scale isn't the code. It's the proxies, headless browsers, and constant anti bot churn. Spider Cloud runs all of…
read the full spider overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is changedetection.io or spider more popular?
changedetection.io has 35,461 GitHub stars and spider has 2,815. changedetection.io has the larger community by that measure.
Are changedetection.io and spider free?
Both are open source. changedetection.io is licensed under Apache-2.0 and spider under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between changedetection.io and spider?
changedetection.io is written in Python and spider 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, changedetection.io or spider?
Choose changedetection.io if you want the larger community (35,461 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose spider if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.