head to head · open source
CloakBrowser vs node-crawler
CloakBrowser has 32,721 GitHub stars, 2,721 forks, 164 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. node-crawler has 6,796 stars, 862 forks, 29 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. CloakBrowser leads on adoption by 381% (32,721 vs 6,796 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 | ★ 33K | ★ 6.8K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-06-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 862 |
| 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 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
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 node-crawler
[![NPM download][download image]][download url] [![Package Quality][quality image]][quality url] [quality image]: [quality url]: [download image]: [download url]: Crawler v2 : Advanced and Typescript version of node crawler Features: Server side DOM & automatic jQuery insertion with Cheerio (default), Configurable pool size and retries, Control rate limit, Priority queue of requests, let crawler deal for you with charset detection and conversion, If you have prior experience with Crawler v1, for fast migration, please proceed to the section Differences and Breaking Changes. Use with AI agents This package ships…
read the full node-crawler overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is CloakBrowser or node-crawler more popular?
CloakBrowser has 32,721 GitHub stars and node-crawler has 6,796. 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 (32,721 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose node-crawler if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.