head to head · open source
CloakBrowser vs spider
CloakBrowser has 32,712 GitHub stars, 2,720 forks, 164 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. spider has 2,820 stars, 322 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. CloakBrowser leads on adoption by 1,060% (32,712 vs 2,820 stars). CloakBrowser is written in Python under MIT; spider is written in Rust under MIT. CloakBrowser has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, spider 11%. 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 | spider | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 2.8K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 322 |
| 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 spider if
- You want the spider feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and spider 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 spider
Spider The fastest web crawler and scraper for Rust. spider.cloud · Guides · Docs · Examples · Discord Spider is a concurrency first crawling engine written in Rust. It streams pages as they arrive, renders JavaScript only on pages that need it, and scales from a single script to a distributed fleet without changing your code. The same engine runs Spider Cloud, so you can prototype locally and move to managed infrastructure with one config change. Start in the cloud The hardest part of crawling at scale isn't the code. It's the proxies, headless browsers, and constant anti bot churn. Spider Cloud runs all of…
read the full spider overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is CloakBrowser or spider more popular?
CloakBrowser has 32,712 GitHub stars and spider has 2,820. CloakBrowser has the larger community by that measure.
Are CloakBrowser and spider free?
Both are open source. CloakBrowser is licensed under MIT and spider under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between CloakBrowser and spider?
CloakBrowser is written in Python and spider in Rust. 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 spider?
Choose CloakBrowser if you want the larger community (32,712 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose spider if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.