head to head · open source
CloakBrowser vs gain
CloakBrowser has 32,721 GitHub stars, 2,721 forks, 164 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. gain has 2,017 stars, 202 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. CloakBrowser leads on adoption by 1,522% (32,721 vs 2,017 stars). CloakBrowser is written in Python under MIT; gain is written in Python under MIT. CloakBrowser has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, gain 10%. 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 | gain | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 2.0K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-08-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 202 |
| 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 gain if
- You want the gain feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and gain 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 gain
gain Async web crawling framework for everyone. Built on asyncio , aiohttp , and lxml / pyquery . Declare items and parsers; gain handles the concurrency, retries, and persistence. Install Linux users can opt into uvloop for an extra speed bump: Requires Python 3.10+. Quickstart Run it: XPath parsers How it works 1. Spider kicks off from start url under a concurrency budget. 2. Parsers either follow (one argument) — discovering more URLs to queue — or extract (two arguments) — instantiating an Item from each matching page. 3. Items use Css / Xpath / Regex selectors to pull fields out of HTML. 4. save() is your…
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Frequently asked questions
Is CloakBrowser or gain more popular?
CloakBrowser has 32,721 GitHub stars and gain has 2,017. CloakBrowser has the larger community by that measure.
Are CloakBrowser and gain free?
Both are open source. CloakBrowser is licensed under MIT and gain under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between CloakBrowser and gain?
CloakBrowser is written in Python and gain in Python. 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 gain?
Choose CloakBrowser if you want the larger community (32,721 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose gain if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.