head to head · open source
colly vs invisible_playwright
colly has 25,527 GitHub stars, 1,862 forks, 195 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. invisible_playwright has 2,839 stars, 284 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped today. colly leads on adoption by 799% (25,527 vs 2,839 stars). colly is written in Go under Apache-2.0; invisible_playwright is written in Python under MIT. colly has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, invisible_playwright 10%. invisible_playwright 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 | invisible_playwright | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 2.8K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 284 |
| 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 invisible_playwright if
- You want the invisible_playwright feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and invisible_playwright 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 invisible_playwright
invisible playwright is a free, MIT licensed Python package that makes Playwright's headless Firefox present as a real browser and behave like a real user, built for developers whose scrapers must clear bot detection such as reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha and Cloudflare Turnstile.
read the full invisible_playwright overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is colly or invisible_playwright more popular?
colly has 25,527 GitHub stars and invisible_playwright has 2,839. colly has the larger community by that measure.
Are colly and invisible_playwright free?
Both are open source. colly is licensed under Apache-2.0 and invisible_playwright under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between colly and invisible_playwright?
colly is written in Go and invisible_playwright 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, colly or invisible_playwright?
Choose colly if you want the larger community (25,527 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose invisible_playwright if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.