head to head · open source
CloakBrowser vs scrapy-playwright
CloakBrowser has 32,236 GitHub stars, 2,699 forks, 150 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. scrapy-playwright has 1,458 stars, 163 forks, 22 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. CloakBrowser leads on adoption by 2,111% (32,236 vs 1,458 stars). CloakBrowser is written in Python under MIT; scrapy-playwright is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause. CloakBrowser has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, scrapy-playwright 11%. scrapy-playwright was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (headless-browser, playwright), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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 | scrapy-playwright | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | MIT | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-10-14 | 2026-10-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 163 |
| 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 scrapy-playwright if
- You want the scrapy-playwright feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and scrapy-playwright 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 scrapy-playwright
scrapy playwright is a Scrapy download handler that performs requests using Playwright for Python, so existing Scrapy crawlers can render pages that require JavaScript — built for Python developers who want browser grade rendering inside a normal Scrapy workflow.
read the full scrapy-playwright overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is CloakBrowser or scrapy-playwright more popular?
CloakBrowser has 32,236 GitHub stars and scrapy-playwright has 1,458. CloakBrowser has the larger community by that measure.
Are CloakBrowser and scrapy-playwright free?
Both are open source. CloakBrowser is licensed under MIT and scrapy-playwright under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between CloakBrowser and scrapy-playwright?
CloakBrowser is written in Python and scrapy-playwright 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 scrapy-playwright?
Choose CloakBrowser if you want the larger community (32,236 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose scrapy-playwright if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.