head to head · open source
CloakBrowser vs colly
CloakBrowser has 31,528 GitHub stars, 2,612 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. colly has 25,520 stars, 1,862 forks, 195 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. CloakBrowser leads on adoption by 24% (31,528 vs 25,520 stars). CloakBrowser is written in Python under MIT; colly is written in Go under Apache-2.0. CloakBrowser has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, colly 7%. colly 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
| CloakBrowser | colly | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 26K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-13 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 1.9K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick CloakBrowser if
- You weight community size — 32K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick colly if
- You want the colly feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and colly fits your workflow better
About CloakBrowser
CloakBrowser is a stealth Chromium build for Python and JavaScript teams that need browser automation to survive bot detection systems, aimed at scraping and AI agent engineers who want to replace Playwright or Puppeteer without rewriting their code.
read the full CloakBrowser overview →
About colly
Colly is an open source scraping and crawling framework written in Go, distributed under the Apache 2.0 license. It lives in the Go ecosystem and is consumed as a library rather than a standalone application: the README describes it as providing a clean interface for writing any kind of crawler, scraper, or spider, and the project's own topics list it as a crawler, crawling framework, scraper, scraping tool, and spider. The repository has been public for roughly nine years, carries 25,516 stars and 1,862 forks, and its most recent push was on 2 September 2026. Documentation and examples are hosted at go colly.org…
read the full colly overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is CloakBrowser or colly more popular?
CloakBrowser has 31,528 GitHub stars and colly has 25,520. CloakBrowser has the larger community by that measure.
Are CloakBrowser and colly free?
Both are open source. CloakBrowser is licensed under MIT and colly under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between CloakBrowser and colly?
CloakBrowser is written in Python and colly 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 colly?
Choose CloakBrowser if you want the larger community (31,528 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose colly if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.