head to head · open source
CloakBrowser vs crawly
CloakBrowser has 32,821 GitHub stars, 2,727 forks, 167 open issues and last shipped yesterday. crawly has 1,129 stars, 125 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. CloakBrowser leads on adoption by 2,807% (32,821 vs 1,129 stars). CloakBrowser is written in Python under MIT; crawly is written in Elixir under Apache-2.0. CloakBrowser has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, crawly 11%. 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 | crawly | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Elixir |
| Last push | 2026-11-10 | 2026-11-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 125 |
| 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 crawly if
- You want the crawly feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Elixir
- You evaluated both and crawly 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 crawly
Crawly Overview Crawly is an application framework for crawling web sites and extracting structured data which can be used for a wide range of useful applications, like data mining, information processing or historical archival. Requirements 1. Elixir 1.14 2. Works on GNU/Linux, Windows, macOS X, and BSD. Quickstart 0. Create a new project: mix new quickstart sup 1. Add Crawly as a dependencies: 2. Fetch dependencies: $ mix deps.get 3. Create a spider New in 0.15.0 : It's possible to use the command to speed up the spider creation, so you will have a generated file with all needed callbacks: mix…
read the full crawly overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is CloakBrowser or crawly more popular?
CloakBrowser has 32,821 GitHub stars and crawly has 1,129. CloakBrowser has the larger community by that measure.
Are CloakBrowser and crawly free?
Both are open source. CloakBrowser is licensed under MIT and crawly under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between CloakBrowser and crawly?
CloakBrowser is written in Python and crawly in Elixir. 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 crawly?
Choose CloakBrowser if you want the larger community (32,821 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose crawly if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.