head to head · open source
Crawl4AI vs colly
Crawl4AI has 83,747 GitHub stars, 8,660 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. colly has 25,520 stars, 1,862 forks, 195 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Crawl4AI leads on adoption by 228% (83,747 vs 25,520 stars). Crawl4AI is written in Python under Apache-2.0; colly is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Crawl4AI has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, colly 7%. colly 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
| Crawl4AI | colly | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 84K | ★ 26K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.7K | ⑂ 1.9K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Crawl4AI if
- You weight community size — 84K 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 colly if
- You want the colly 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 colly fits your workflow better
About Crawl4AI
Crawl4AI is an open source web crawler and scraper designed to prepare website content for large language model (LLM) workflows. It lives in the Python ecosystem and targets data extraction for RAG, agents, and AI pipelines. Unlike many tools that require API keys or paid subscriptions, Crawl4AI provides direct, self hosted access to web content with output structured specifically for LLM consumption.
read the full Crawl4AI overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Crawl4AI or colly more popular?
Crawl4AI has 83,747 GitHub stars and colly has 25,520. Crawl4AI has the larger community by that measure.
Are Crawl4AI and colly free?
Both are open source. Crawl4AI is licensed under Apache-2.0 and colly under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Crawl4AI and colly?
Crawl4AI is written in Python and colly 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, Crawl4AI or colly?
Choose Crawl4AI if you want the larger community (83,747 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose colly if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.