head to head · open source
colly vs pydoll
colly has 25,520 GitHub stars, 1,862 forks, 195 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. pydoll has 7,088 stars, 406 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. colly leads on adoption by 260% (25,520 vs 7,088 stars). colly is written in Go under Apache-2.0; pydoll is written in HTML under MIT. colly has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, pydoll 6%. pydoll was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (crawler), 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 | pydoll | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 7.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 406 |
| 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 pydoll if
- You want the pydoll feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and pydoll 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 pydoll
Pydoll is a stealth first Python library that automates Chromium based browsers directly over the DevTools Protocol, without a WebDriver, for developers who scrape, test, or automate sites that block ordinary bots.
read the full pydoll overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is colly or pydoll more popular?
colly has 25,520 GitHub stars and pydoll has 7,088. colly has the larger community by that measure.
Are colly and pydoll free?
Both are open source. colly is licensed under Apache-2.0 and pydoll under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between colly and pydoll?
colly is written in Go and pydoll in HTML. 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 pydoll?
Choose colly if you want the larger community (25,520 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose pydoll if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.