head to head · open source
colly vs firecrawl-mcp-server
colly has 25,520 GitHub stars, 1,862 forks, 195 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. firecrawl-mcp-server has 7,477 stars, 888 forks, 136 open issues and last shipped yesterday. colly leads on adoption by 241% (25,520 vs 7,477 stars). colly is written in Go under Apache-2.0; firecrawl-mcp-server is written in TypeScript under MIT. colly has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, firecrawl-mcp-server 12%. firecrawl-mcp-server 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
| colly | firecrawl-mcp-server | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 7.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 888 |
| 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 firecrawl-mcp-server if
- You want the firecrawl-mcp-server feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and firecrawl-mcp-server 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 firecrawl-mcp-server
Firecrawl MCP Server is the official Model Context Protocol server that gives Cursor, Claude, and other MCP compatible AI clients search, scraping, and page interaction against the live web.
read the full firecrawl-mcp-server overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is colly or firecrawl-mcp-server more popular?
colly has 25,520 GitHub stars and firecrawl-mcp-server has 7,477. colly has the larger community by that measure.
Are colly and firecrawl-mcp-server free?
Both are open source. colly is licensed under Apache-2.0 and firecrawl-mcp-server under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between colly and firecrawl-mcp-server?
colly is written in Go and firecrawl-mcp-server in TypeScript. 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 firecrawl-mcp-server?
Choose colly if you want the larger community (25,520 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose firecrawl-mcp-server if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.