head to head · open source
Crawl4AI vs dots
Crawl4AI has 84,586 GitHub stars, 8,750 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. dots has 1,942 stars, 320 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Crawl4AI leads on adoption by 4,256% (84,586 vs 1,942 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 16%. dots was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ai-agents, 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.
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Side by side
| Crawl4AI | dots | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 85K | ★ 1.9K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-25 | 2026-09-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.8K | ⑂ 320 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Crawl4AI if
- You weight community size — 85K 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 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 dots
dots is an open source AI web agent that ships with its own anti detect Firefox browser, aimed at developers and automation engineers who need an agent to browse, log in and click through real websites without being blocked.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Crawl4AI or dots more popular?
Crawl4AI has 84,586 GitHub stars and dots has 1,942. 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 (84,586 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose dots if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.