head to head · open source
Crawl4AI vs brightdata-mcp
Crawl4AI has 86,783 GitHub stars, 9,043 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped yesterday. brightdata-mcp has 2,705 stars, 337 forks, 40 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Crawl4AI leads on adoption by 3,108% (86,783 vs 2,705 stars). Crawl4AI is written in Python under Apache-2.0; brightdata-mcp is written in JavaScript under MIT. Crawl4AI has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, brightdata-mcp 12%. Crawl4AI was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (ai-agents, data-extraction, llm, mcp), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Crawl4AI | brightdata-mcp | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 87K | ★ 2.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.0K | ⑂ 337 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Crawl4AI if
- You weight community size — 87K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick brightdata-mcp if
- You want the brightdata-mcp feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and brightdata-mcp fits your workflow better
About Crawl4AI
🚀🤖 Crawl4AI: Open source LLM Friendly Web Crawler & Scraper. 🚀 Crawl4AI Cloud API — Closed Beta (Launching Soon) Reliable, large scale web extraction, now built to be drastically more cost effective than any of the existing solutions. 👉 Apply here for early access We’ll be onboarding in phases and working closely with early users. Limited slots. Crawl4AI turns the web into clean, LLM ready Markdown for RAG, agents, and data pipelines. Fast, controllable, battle tested by a 50k+ star community. ✨ Check out latest update v0.9.3 ✨ New in v0.9.3 : Security release. Closes five coordinated disclosure advisories…
read the full Crawl4AI overview →
About brightdata-mcp
Bright Data MCP Web search, page scraping, structured data extraction, and browser automation for AI agents and LLMs over the Model Context Protocol. Works with AI agents, coding agents, chat assistants, and any MCP compatible client. Quick Start • Pricing • Use Cases • Tools • Agent Skills • Docs • Support Free tier: 5,000 requests per month. No credit card required. Renews monthly. Overview The Bright Data MCP server gives AI agents real time access to public web data. It exposes 69 tools covering: Web search — Google, Bing, and Yandex results as structured data Page scraping — any URL as Markdown or HTML…
read the full brightdata-mcp overview →
More in Data & Analytics
Related comparisons
More Data Extraction & Web Scraping projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Data Extraction & Web Scraping field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Crawl4AI or brightdata-mcp more popular?
Crawl4AI has 86,783 GitHub stars and brightdata-mcp has 2,705. Crawl4AI has the larger community by that measure.
Are Crawl4AI and brightdata-mcp free?
Both are open source. Crawl4AI is licensed under Apache-2.0 and brightdata-mcp under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Crawl4AI and brightdata-mcp?
Crawl4AI is written in Python and brightdata-mcp in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Crawl4AI or brightdata-mcp?
Choose Crawl4AI if you want the larger community (86,783 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose brightdata-mcp if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.