head to head · open source
Crawl4AI vs curl_cffi
Crawl4AI has 86,783 GitHub stars, 9,043 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped yesterday. curl_cffi has 6,812 stars, 571 forks, 72 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. Crawl4AI leads on adoption by 1,174% (86,783 vs 6,812 stars). Crawl4AI is written in Python under Apache-2.0; curl_cffi is written in Python under MIT. Crawl4AI has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, curl_cffi 8%. Crawl4AI 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 | curl_cffi | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 87K | ★ 6.8K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.0K | ⑂ 571 |
| 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 curl_cffi if
- You want the curl_cffi feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and curl_cffi 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 curl_cffi
curl cffi Documentation Python binding for curl impersonate fork via cffi. For commercial support, visit impersonate.pro. curl cffi is the most popular Python binding for curl . Unlike other pure python http clients like httpx or requests , curl cffi can impersonate browsers' TLS/JA3 and HTTP/2 fingerprints. If you are blocked by some website for no obvious reason, you can give curl cffi a try. For JavaScript bindings, see impers, for solving JavaScript challenges, see brimp. Python 3.10 is the minimum supported version since v0.14. Recent highlights 🧭 Our new toy, brimp, a lightweight browser, works like curl…
read the full curl_cffi overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Crawl4AI or curl_cffi more popular?
Crawl4AI has 86,783 GitHub stars and curl_cffi has 6,812. Crawl4AI has the larger community by that measure.
Are Crawl4AI and curl_cffi free?
Both are open source. Crawl4AI is licensed under Apache-2.0 and curl_cffi under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Crawl4AI and curl_cffi?
Crawl4AI is written in Python and curl_cffi 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, Crawl4AI or curl_cffi?
Choose Crawl4AI if you want the larger community (86,783 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose curl_cffi if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.