head to head · open source
CloakBrowser vs spider
CloakBrowser has 31,578 GitHub stars, 2,615 forks, 227 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. spider has 2,724 stars, 302 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. CloakBrowser leads on adoption by 1,059% (31,578 vs 2,724 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 | ★ 32K | ★ 2.7K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 302 |
| 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 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
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 spider
Spider is a concurrency first web crawling and scraping engine written in Rust, licensed under MIT, and aimed at developers and data teams that need to collect web data with low latency, from a single script up to a distributed fleet.
read the full spider overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is CloakBrowser or spider more popular?
CloakBrowser has 31,578 GitHub stars and spider has 2,724. 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 (31,578 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose spider if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.