head to head · open source
CloakBrowser vs katana
CloakBrowser has 31,528 GitHub stars, 2,612 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. katana has 17,518 stars, 1,183 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. CloakBrowser leads on adoption by 80% (31,528 vs 17,518 stars). CloakBrowser is written in Python under MIT; katana is written in Go under MIT. CloakBrowser has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, katana 7%. katana 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 | katana | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 18K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-13 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| 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 katana if
- You want the katana feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and katana 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 katana
Katana is an open source, MIT licensed crawling and spidering framework written in Go, built for security engineers and automation pipelines that need to map web applications at scale rather than explore them by hand.
read the full katana overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is CloakBrowser or katana more popular?
CloakBrowser has 31,528 GitHub stars and katana has 17,518. CloakBrowser has the larger community by that measure.
Are CloakBrowser and katana free?
Both are open source. CloakBrowser is licensed under MIT and katana under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between CloakBrowser and katana?
CloakBrowser is written in Python and katana 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 katana?
Choose CloakBrowser if you want the larger community (31,528 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose katana if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.