head to head · open source
Crawl4AI vs pdf_oxide
Crawl4AI has 83,747 GitHub stars, 8,660 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. pdf_oxide has 1,033 stars, 129 forks, 322 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Crawl4AI leads on adoption by 8,007% (83,747 vs 1,033 stars). Crawl4AI is written in Python under Apache-2.0; pdf_oxide is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Crawl4AI has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, pdf_oxide 12%. pdf_oxide 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 | pdf_oxide | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 84K | ★ 1.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.7K | ⑂ 129 |
| 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 pdf_oxide if
- You want the pdf_oxide 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 pdf_oxide 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 pdf_oxide
PDFOxide is a Rust core PDF toolkit with bindings for nineteen additional languages, plus a command line tool and an MCP server, aimed at developers and data teams that need fast, permissively licensed text extraction, image extraction, markdown conversion, and PDF creation and editing.
read the full pdf_oxide overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Crawl4AI or pdf_oxide more popular?
Crawl4AI has 83,747 GitHub stars and pdf_oxide has 1,033. Crawl4AI has the larger community by that measure.
Are Crawl4AI and pdf_oxide free?
Both are open source. Crawl4AI is licensed under Apache-2.0 and pdf_oxide under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Crawl4AI and pdf_oxide?
Crawl4AI is written in Python and pdf_oxide 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 pdf_oxide?
Choose Crawl4AI if you want the larger community (83,747 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose pdf_oxide if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.