head to head · open source
Crawl4AI vs open-dots
Crawl4AI has 84,573 GitHub stars, 8,749 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. open-dots has 4,834 stars, 546 forks, 21 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Crawl4AI leads on adoption by 1,650% (84,573 vs 4,834 stars). Crawl4AI is written in Python under Apache-2.0; open-dots is written in Python under MIT. Crawl4AI has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, open-dots 11%. open-dots 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 | open-dots | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 85K | ★ 4.8K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-25 | 2026-09-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.7K | ⑂ 546 |
| 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 open-dots if
- You want the open-dots feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and open-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 open-dots
Open Dots is a self hosted, MIT licensed AI workspace for developers and individuals who want chat, tool use, approval workflows, connectors and an optional computer runtime to run locally under their own control, positioned as an open source alternative to OpenAI Dots.
read the full open-dots overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Crawl4AI or open-dots more popular?
Crawl4AI has 84,573 GitHub stars and open-dots has 4,834. Crawl4AI has the larger community by that measure.
Are Crawl4AI and open-dots free?
Both are open source. Crawl4AI is licensed under Apache-2.0 and open-dots under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Crawl4AI and open-dots?
Crawl4AI is written in Python and open-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 open-dots?
Choose Crawl4AI if you want the larger community (84,573 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose open-dots if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.