head to head · open source
Crawl4AI vs ferret
Crawl4AI has 86,783 GitHub stars, 9,043 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ferret has 6,020 stars, 325 forks, 12 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Crawl4AI leads on adoption by 1,342% (86,783 vs 6,020 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. The two share 1 topic tag (data-extraction), 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 | ferret | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 87K | ★ 6.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.0K | ⑂ 325 |
| 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 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: 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 ferret
Ferret Try it! Docs CLI Test runner Web worker Explore Ferret v2 Ferret v2 is currently in alpha. You can try the new syntax in the playground and read more about the design behind the new runtime and language capabilities: Try Ferret v2 in the Playground On the Road to Ferret v2 Inside Ferret v2: The New Execution Model Inside Ferret v2: New Language Capabilities Notice: This branch contains the upcoming Ferret v2 . For the stable v1 release, please visit Ferret v1. What is it? Ferret is a declarative first, expression oriented embedded language and runtime for data automation. FQL combines querying…
read the full ferret overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Crawl4AI or ferret more popular?
Crawl4AI has 86,783 GitHub stars and ferret has 6,020. 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 (86,783 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.