head to head · open source
Crawl4AI vs ferret
Crawl4AI has 83,747 GitHub stars, 8,660 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. ferret has 6,011 stars, 324 forks, 12 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Crawl4AI leads on adoption by 1,293% (83,747 vs 6,011 stars). Crawl4AI is written in Python under Apache-2.0; ferret is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Crawl4AI has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, ferret 5%. ferret 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 | ferret | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 84K | ★ 6.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.7K | ⑂ 324 |
| 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 ferret if
- You want the ferret 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 ferret 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 ferret
Ferret is a declarative data automation language and embeddable Go runtime for structured extraction workflows, built for Go developers who need to query, transform, and synchronize structured data across browsers, APIs, databases, and documents from inside their own applications.
read the full ferret overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Crawl4AI or ferret more popular?
Crawl4AI has 83,747 GitHub stars and ferret has 6,011. Crawl4AI has the larger community by that measure.
Are Crawl4AI and ferret free?
Both are open source. Crawl4AI is licensed under Apache-2.0 and ferret under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Crawl4AI and ferret?
Crawl4AI is written in Python and ferret 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 ferret?
Choose Crawl4AI if you want the larger community (83,747 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose ferret if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.