head to head · open source
Crawl4AI vs moli
Crawl4AI has 86,783 GitHub stars, 9,043 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped yesterday. moli has 22,228 stars, 611 forks, 126 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Crawl4AI leads on adoption by 290% (86,783 vs 22,228 stars). Crawl4AI is written in Python under Apache-2.0; moli is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Crawl4AI has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, moli 3%. moli 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, playwright), 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 | moli | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 87K | ★ 22K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.0K | ⑂ 611 |
| 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 moli if
- You want the moli feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and moli 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 moli
Moli English 简体中文 日本語 Deutsch Français Español Moli is a production ready headless browser for AI agents. Its on demand layout and rendering design combines a complete browser runtime with a lightweight resource footprint. Moli helps your AI agent fetch and extract web pages, search the web, and automate browser tasks. Use it through the CLI, CDP, WebDriver Classic, or WebDriver BiDi. Moli supports Linux, macOS, and Windows. Quick start Give this prompt to your AI agent: Direct installation On Linux or macOS: On Windows, run in PowerShell: Showcase An HTML5 game rendered by Moli and inspected live through Chrome…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Crawl4AI or moli more popular?
Crawl4AI has 86,783 GitHub stars and moli has 22,228. Crawl4AI has the larger community by that measure.
Are Crawl4AI and moli free?
Both are open source. Crawl4AI is licensed under Apache-2.0 and moli under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Crawl4AI and moli?
Crawl4AI is written in Python and moli in Rust. 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 moli?
Choose Crawl4AI if you want the larger community (86,783 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose moli if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.