head to head · open source
Crawl4AI vs PHPScraper
Crawl4AI has 83,782 GitHub stars, 8,664 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. PHPScraper has 588 stars, 75 forks, 28 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. Crawl4AI leads on adoption by 14,149% (83,782 vs 588 stars). Crawl4AI is written in Python under Apache-2.0; PHPScraper is written in PHP under GPL-3.0. Crawl4AI has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, PHPScraper 13%. 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 | PHPScraper | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 84K | ★ 588 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.7K | ⑂ 75 |
| 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 PHPScraper if
- You want the PHPScraper feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and PHPScraper 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 PHPScraper
PHPScraper is a GPL 3.0 PHP web utility for developers who need to extract structured information such as titles, metadata, social tags, headings, lists, images, links, keywords, and downloadable assets from websites without writing selectors or manually preparing the extracted data.
read the full PHPScraper overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Crawl4AI or PHPScraper more popular?
Crawl4AI has 83,782 GitHub stars and PHPScraper has 588. Crawl4AI has the larger community by that measure.
Are Crawl4AI and PHPScraper free?
Both are open source. Crawl4AI is licensed under Apache-2.0 and PHPScraper under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Crawl4AI and PHPScraper?
Crawl4AI is written in Python and PHPScraper in PHP. 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 PHPScraper?
Choose Crawl4AI if you want the larger community (83,782 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose PHPScraper if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.