head to head · open source
Crawl4AI vs PDFLayoutTextStripper
Crawl4AI has 85,880 GitHub stars, 8,931 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped today. PDFLayoutTextStripper has 1,610 stars, 213 forks, 25 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Crawl4AI leads on adoption by 5,234% (85,880 vs 1,610 stars). Crawl4AI is written in Python under Apache-2.0; PDFLayoutTextStripper is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Crawl4AI has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, PDFLayoutTextStripper 13%. Crawl4AI was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (data-extraction), 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 | PDFLayoutTextStripper | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 86K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Java |
| Last push | 2026-10-20 | 2026-10-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.9K | ⑂ 213 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Crawl4AI if
- You weight community size — 86K 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 PDFLayoutTextStripper if
- You want the PDFLayoutTextStripper feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and PDFLayoutTextStripper 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 PDFLayoutTextStripper
PDFLayoutTextStripper Converts a PDF file into a text file while keeping the layout of the original PDF. Useful to extract the content from a table or a form in a PDF file. PDFLayoutTextStripper is a subclass of PDFTextStripper class (from the Apache PDFBox library). This repository is supported by our sponsor Spire.PDF for Java Create, edit, convert, and process PDF documents programmatically in Java, with support for tables, forms, images, annotations, and more. Explore Spire.PDF for Java → Use cases Data extraction from a table in a PDF file Data extraction from a form in a PDF file How to install Maven…
read the full PDFLayoutTextStripper overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Crawl4AI or PDFLayoutTextStripper more popular?
Crawl4AI has 85,880 GitHub stars and PDFLayoutTextStripper has 1,610. Crawl4AI has the larger community by that measure.
Are Crawl4AI and PDFLayoutTextStripper free?
Both are open source. Crawl4AI is licensed under Apache-2.0 and PDFLayoutTextStripper under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Crawl4AI and PDFLayoutTextStripper?
Crawl4AI is written in Python and PDFLayoutTextStripper in Java. 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 PDFLayoutTextStripper?
Choose Crawl4AI if you want the larger community (85,880 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose PDFLayoutTextStripper if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.