head to head · open source
CloakBrowser vs webclaw
CloakBrowser has 32,712 GitHub stars, 2,720 forks, 164 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. webclaw has 2,425 stars, 242 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. CloakBrowser leads on adoption by 1,249% (32,712 vs 2,425 stars). CloakBrowser is written in Python under MIT; webclaw is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0. CloakBrowser has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, webclaw 10%. CloakBrowser was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ai-agents), 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 | webclaw | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 2.4K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 242 |
| 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 webclaw if
- You want the webclaw feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and webclaw 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 webclaw
English 简体中文 webclaw Turn websites into clean markdown, JSON, and LLM ready context. CLI, MCP server, REST API, and SDKs for AI agents and RAG pipelines. Most web scraping tools give your agent one of two bad outputs: a blocked page, login wall, or empty app shell raw HTML full of nav, scripts, styling, ads, and duplicated boilerplate webclaw.io is the hosted web extraction API for webclaw. This repo contains the open source CLI, MCP server, extraction engine, and self hostable server. webclaw turns a URL into clean content your tools can actually use. Use it from the terminal, wire it into Claude/Cursor through…
read the full webclaw overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is CloakBrowser or webclaw more popular?
CloakBrowser has 32,712 GitHub stars and webclaw has 2,425. CloakBrowser has the larger community by that measure.
Are CloakBrowser and webclaw free?
Both are open source. CloakBrowser is licensed under MIT and webclaw under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between CloakBrowser and webclaw?
CloakBrowser is written in Python and webclaw 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 webclaw?
Choose CloakBrowser if you want the larger community (32,712 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose webclaw if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.