head to head · open source
CloakBrowser vs node-crawler
CloakBrowser has 31,578 GitHub stars, 2,615 forks, 227 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. node-crawler has 6,793 stars, 864 forks, 29 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. CloakBrowser leads on adoption by 365% (31,578 vs 6,793 stars). CloakBrowser is written in Python under MIT; node-crawler is written in TypeScript under MIT. CloakBrowser has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, node-crawler 13%. 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 | node-crawler | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 6.8K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-06-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 864 |
| 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 node-crawler if
- You want the node-crawler feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and node-crawler 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 node-crawler
node crawler is a web crawler and spider library for Node.js that pairs a request queue with a server side DOM. It lives in the Node.js ecosystem and is published to npm under the package name crawler . The project is written in TypeScript and released under the MIT license, with 6,792 stars, 864 forks, and 29 open issues at the time of writing. The repository has been in development for 16 years and was last pushed on 18 June 2026. Version 2 is described as the advanced and TypeScript version of the original node crawler, and the topic list — cheerio, crawler, extract data, javascript, jquery, nodejs, spider — r…
read the full node-crawler overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is CloakBrowser or node-crawler more popular?
CloakBrowser has 31,578 GitHub stars and node-crawler has 6,793. CloakBrowser has the larger community by that measure.
Are CloakBrowser and node-crawler free?
Both are open source. CloakBrowser is licensed under MIT and node-crawler under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between CloakBrowser and node-crawler?
CloakBrowser is written in Python and node-crawler in TypeScript. 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 node-crawler?
Choose CloakBrowser if you want the larger community (31,578 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose node-crawler if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.