head to head · open source
Crawl4AI vs dots
Crawl4AI has 87,371 GitHub stars, 9,116 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. dots has 32,530 stars, 4,757 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Crawl4AI leads on adoption by 169% (87,371 vs 32,530 stars). Crawl4AI is written in Python under Apache-2.0; dots is written in Python under MIT. Crawl4AI has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, dots 15%. dots 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 | dots | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 87K | ★ 33K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-13 | 2026-11-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.1K | ⑂ 4.8K |
| 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 dots if
- You want the dots feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and dots 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 dots
dots Every AI agent is a model and a browser. You can swap the model with one flag. The browser is what the website sees. Windows, in PowerShell: Linux: Then open The conversation on the left, the browser on the right, live. It all comes down to the browser When a web agent fails, the model is rarely why. The page never loaded, a challenge appeared, the login expired, the click did not land. All of that happens in the browser, before the model gets to think. So dots is built around one: A real Firefox engine, patched in C++. The fingerprint is decided inside the engine, not painted over with JavaScript that a…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Crawl4AI or dots more popular?
Crawl4AI has 87,371 GitHub stars and dots has 32,530. Crawl4AI has the larger community by that measure.
Are Crawl4AI and dots free?
Both are open source. Crawl4AI is licensed under Apache-2.0 and dots under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Crawl4AI and dots?
Crawl4AI is written in Python and dots 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 dots?
Choose Crawl4AI if you want the larger community (87,371 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose dots if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.