head to head · open source
CloakBrowser vs colly
CloakBrowser has 32,693 GitHub stars, 2,719 forks, 164 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. colly has 25,572 stars, 1,859 forks, 195 open issues and last shipped 18 days ago. CloakBrowser leads on adoption by 28% (32,693 vs 25,572 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%. CloakBrowser 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 | ★ 33K | ★ 26K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-10-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 1.9K |
| 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 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
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 colly
Colly Lightning Fast and Elegant Scraping Framework for Gophers Colly provides a clean interface to write any kind of crawler/scraper/spider. With Colly you can easily extract structured data from websites, which can be used for a wide range of applications, like data mining, data processing or archiving. Sponsors NodeMaven: The most efficient proxy provider for Web Scrapping and Automation with the Highest Quality IP on the market. Why NodeMaven? 99.9% uptime ZIP Targeting IP filtering: all proxies have fraud score 1k request/sec on a single core) Manages request delays and maximum concurrency per domain…
read the full colly overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is CloakBrowser or colly more popular?
CloakBrowser has 32,693 GitHub stars and colly has 25,572. 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 (32,693 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose colly if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.