head to head · open source
Crawl4AI vs patchright-nodejs
Crawl4AI has 83,782 GitHub stars, 8,664 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. patchright-nodejs has 785 stars, 50 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. Crawl4AI leads on adoption by 10,573% (83,782 vs 785 stars). Crawl4AI is written in Python under Apache-2.0; patchright-nodejs is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Crawl4AI has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, patchright-nodejs 6%. Crawl4AI 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 | patchright-nodejs | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 84K | ★ 785 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.7K | ⑂ 50 |
| 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 patchright-nodejs if
- You want the patchright-nodejs feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and patchright-nodejs 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 patchright-nodejs
Patchright for Node.js is a patched, undetected drop in replacement for the Playwright browser automation framework, built in TypeScript for Node.js developers whose scraping, testing, and automation jobs get blocked by bot detection.
read the full patchright-nodejs overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Crawl4AI or patchright-nodejs more popular?
Crawl4AI has 83,782 GitHub stars and patchright-nodejs has 785. Crawl4AI has the larger community by that measure.
Are Crawl4AI and patchright-nodejs free?
Both are open source. Crawl4AI is licensed under Apache-2.0 and patchright-nodejs under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Crawl4AI and patchright-nodejs?
Crawl4AI is written in Python and patchright-nodejs in TypeScript. 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 patchright-nodejs?
Choose Crawl4AI if you want the larger community (83,782 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose patchright-nodejs if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.