head to head · open source
colly vs ferret
colly has 25,520 GitHub stars, 1,862 forks, 195 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. ferret has 6,011 stars, 324 forks, 12 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. colly leads on adoption by 325% (25,520 vs 6,011 stars). colly is written in Go under Apache-2.0; ferret is written in Go under Apache-2.0. colly has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, ferret 5%. ferret was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (go, golang), 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
| colly | ferret | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 6.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 324 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick colly if
- You weight community size — 26K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick ferret if
- You want the ferret feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and ferret fits your workflow better
About colly
Colly is an open source scraping and crawling framework written in Go, distributed under the Apache 2.0 license. It lives in the Go ecosystem and is consumed as a library rather than a standalone application: the README describes it as providing a clean interface for writing any kind of crawler, scraper, or spider, and the project's own topics list it as a crawler, crawling framework, scraper, scraping tool, and spider. The repository has been public for roughly nine years, carries 25,516 stars and 1,862 forks, and its most recent push was on 2 September 2026. Documentation and examples are hosted at go colly.org…
read the full colly overview →
About ferret
Ferret is a declarative data automation language and embeddable Go runtime for structured extraction workflows, built for Go developers who need to query, transform, and synchronize structured data across browsers, APIs, databases, and documents from inside their own applications.
read the full ferret overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is colly or ferret more popular?
colly has 25,520 GitHub stars and ferret has 6,011. colly has the larger community by that measure.
Are colly and ferret free?
Both are open source. colly is licensed under Apache-2.0 and ferret under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between colly and ferret?
colly is written in Go and ferret in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, colly or ferret?
Choose colly if you want the larger community (25,520 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose ferret if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.