head to head · open source
Crawl4AI vs pdf_oxide
Crawl4AI has 86,783 GitHub stars, 9,043 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pdf_oxide has 1,156 stars, 147 forks, 322 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Crawl4AI leads on adoption by 7,407% (86,783 vs 1,156 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 13%. Crawl4AI was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (data-extraction, llm, markdown), 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 | pdf_oxide | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 87K | ★ 1.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.0K | ⑂ 147 |
| 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 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: 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 pdf_oxide
PDFOxide The Fastest PDF Toolkit for 20 Languages — Python, Rust, Go, JS/TS, C , Java, Kotlin, Swift, C++ & more, plus CLI & AI New in v0.3.69 — eleven new language bindings. PDFOxide now ships idiomatic bindings for C++, Swift, Kotlin, Dart, R, Julia, Zig, Scala, Clojure, Objective C, and Elixir , each built over the stable C ABI with its own CI workflow, api coverage tests, and runnable examples. That brings the toolkit to 20 languages (Rust core + 19 bindings). Want another language? Open an issue and tell us. The fastest PDF library for text extraction, image extraction, and markdown conversion. A Rust core…
read the full pdf_oxide overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Crawl4AI or pdf_oxide more popular?
Crawl4AI has 86,783 GitHub stars and pdf_oxide has 1,156. 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 (86,783 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.