head to head · open source
CloakBrowser vs icrawler
CloakBrowser has 31,578 GitHub stars, 2,615 forks, 227 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. icrawler has 933 stars, 181 forks, 31 open issues and last shipped 9 months ago. CloakBrowser leads on adoption by 3,285% (31,578 vs 933 stars). CloakBrowser is written in Python under MIT; icrawler is written in Python under MIT. CloakBrowser has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, icrawler 19%. 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 | icrawler | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 933 |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2025-12-10 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 181 |
| 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 icrawler if
- You want the icrawler feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and icrawler 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 icrawler
icrawler is an MIT licensed Python framework for building multi thread crawlers, shipping ready made crawlers for Google, Bing and Baidu image search plus Flickr, and is aimed at developers who need to harvest image or media datasets without writing their own threading, retry and queueing code.
read the full icrawler overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is CloakBrowser or icrawler more popular?
CloakBrowser has 31,578 GitHub stars and icrawler has 933. CloakBrowser has the larger community by that measure.
Are CloakBrowser and icrawler free?
Both are open source. CloakBrowser is licensed under MIT and icrawler under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between CloakBrowser and icrawler?
CloakBrowser is written in Python and icrawler 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 icrawler?
Choose CloakBrowser if you want the larger community (31,578 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose icrawler if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.