head to head · open source
Crawl4AI vs invisible_playwright
Crawl4AI has 83,782 GitHub stars, 8,664 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. invisible_playwright has 2,050 stars, 236 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped today. Crawl4AI leads on adoption by 3,987% (83,782 vs 2,050 stars). Crawl4AI is written in Python under Apache-2.0; invisible_playwright is written in Python under MIT. Crawl4AI has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, invisible_playwright 12%. invisible_playwright 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 | invisible_playwright | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 84K | ★ 2.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.7K | ⑂ 236 |
| 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 invisible_playwright if
- You want the invisible_playwright feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and invisible_playwright 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 invisible_playwright
Free antidetect browser stealth for Playwright: undetected Firefox fingerprint, headless or headed. Python web scraping and captcha bypass. Open source, and it passes every bot detection test. How it works Anti bots ask two questions, and reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha and Cloudflare Turnstile score the answers. invisible playwright answers yes to both. 1. Is this a real browser? Yes. It is Firefox, patched at the C++ source level. The browser fingerprint is set inside the engine, not injected into the page: navigator, screen, GPU/WebGL, canvas, fonts, audio, WebRTC, timezone, network. Headless or headed, the same values ei…
read the full invisible_playwright overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Crawl4AI or invisible_playwright more popular?
Crawl4AI has 83,782 GitHub stars and invisible_playwright has 2,050. Crawl4AI has the larger community by that measure.
Are Crawl4AI and invisible_playwright free?
Both are open source. Crawl4AI is licensed under Apache-2.0 and invisible_playwright under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Crawl4AI and invisible_playwright?
Crawl4AI is written in Python and invisible_playwright 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 invisible_playwright?
Choose Crawl4AI if you want the larger community (83,782 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose invisible_playwright if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.