head to head · open source
CloakBrowser vs grab
CloakBrowser has 31,578 GitHub stars, 2,615 forks, 227 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. grab has 2,463 stars, 274 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 1.0 years ago. CloakBrowser leads on adoption by 1,182% (31,578 vs 2,463 stars). CloakBrowser is written in Python under MIT; grab is written in Python under MIT. CloakBrowser has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, grab 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 | grab | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 2.5K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2025-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 274 |
| 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 grab if
- You want the grab feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and grab 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 grab
Grab is a Python web scraping framework that gives developers helpers to make network requests, scrape websites, and process the scraped content, and it is aimed at Python programmers who build crawlers and data extraction pipelines.
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Frequently asked questions
Is CloakBrowser or grab more popular?
CloakBrowser has 31,578 GitHub stars and grab has 2,463. CloakBrowser has the larger community by that measure.
Are CloakBrowser and grab free?
Both are open source. CloakBrowser is licensed under MIT and grab under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between CloakBrowser and grab?
CloakBrowser is written in Python and grab 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 grab?
Choose CloakBrowser if you want the larger community (31,578 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose grab if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.