head to head · open source
CloakBrowser vs toapi
CloakBrowser has 32,712 GitHub stars, 2,720 forks, 164 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. toapi has 3,558 stars, 241 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. CloakBrowser leads on adoption by 819% (32,712 vs 3,558 stars). CloakBrowser is written in Python under MIT; toapi is written in Python under MIT. CloakBrowser has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, toapi 7%. 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 | toapi | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 3.6K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-08-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 241 |
| 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 toapi if
- You want the toapi feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and toapi 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 toapi
toapi Turn any website into a JSON API — declaratively. toapi lets you point at a web page, declare the fields you want with CSS selectors, and get back a clean JSON API. No crawler to babysit, no database to maintain — pages are fetched and parsed on demand, with built‑in caching. Install Requires Python 3.10+. Quickstart Run it: Then visit and you get: How it works 1. Route — @api.route("/posts", "/news") maps your API path to a source URL. 2. Fetch — pages are fetched with requests (or a headless browser if you pass browser= ) and cached in memory. 3. Parse — each Item extracts fields with CSS selectors via…
read the full toapi overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is CloakBrowser or toapi more popular?
CloakBrowser has 32,712 GitHub stars and toapi has 3,558. CloakBrowser has the larger community by that measure.
Are CloakBrowser and toapi free?
Both are open source. CloakBrowser is licensed under MIT and toapi under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between CloakBrowser and toapi?
CloakBrowser is written in Python and toapi 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 toapi?
Choose CloakBrowser if you want the larger community (32,712 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose toapi if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.