head to head · open source
CloakBrowser vs anakin
CloakBrowser has 32,712 GitHub stars, 2,720 forks, 164 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. anakin has 3,879 stars, 164 forks, 82 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. CloakBrowser leads on adoption by 743% (32,712 vs 3,879 stars). CloakBrowser is written in Python under MIT; anakin is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. CloakBrowser has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, anakin 4%. CloakBrowser was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (anti-detect, playwright), 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
| CloakBrowser | anakin | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 3.9K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-08-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 164 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick CloakBrowser if
- You weight community size — 33K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick anakin if
- You want the anakin feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and anakin fits your workflow better
About CloakBrowser
Stealth Chromium that passes every bot detection test. Not a patched config. Not a JS injection. A real Chromium binary with fingerprints modified at the C++ source level. Antibot systems score it as a normal browser — because it is a normal browser. Cloudflare Turnstile — 3 live tests passing (headed mode, macOS) Drop in Playwright/Puppeteer replacement for Python and JavaScript. Same API, same code — just swap the import. 3 lines of code, 30 seconds to unblock. 87 source level C++ patches — canvas, WebGL, audio, fonts, GPU, screen, WebRTC, network timing, automation signals, CDP input behavior humanize=True —…
read the full CloakBrowser overview →
About anakin
AnakinScraper OSS The open source web scraping API for AI. Turn any website into LLM ready markdown or structured data. Self host with a single command. No cloud dependencies. Powers RAG pipelines, AI agents, and data extraction at scale. Why AnakinScraper? Features Handler chain with fallback — HTTP fetch → anti detect browser → external API. Each handler tries in order; if one fails, the next picks up automatically. Most pages resolve on the free local HTTP handler — paid APIs are only called for the 5% that actually need them. Docs → Custom API handlers — plug in any third party scraping service as a chain…
read the full anakin overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is CloakBrowser or anakin more popular?
CloakBrowser has 32,712 GitHub stars and anakin has 3,879. CloakBrowser has the larger community by that measure.
Are CloakBrowser and anakin free?
Both are open source. CloakBrowser is licensed under MIT and anakin under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between CloakBrowser and anakin?
CloakBrowser is written in Python and anakin 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, CloakBrowser or anakin?
Choose CloakBrowser if you want the larger community (32,712 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose anakin if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.