head to head · open source
Crawl4AI vs playwright_mcp
Crawl4AI has 87,329 GitHub stars, 9,109 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped yesterday. playwright_mcp has 864 stars, 115 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Crawl4AI leads on adoption by 10,008% (87,329 vs 864 stars). Crawl4AI is written in Python under Apache-2.0; playwright_mcp is written in Python under MIT. Crawl4AI has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, playwright_mcp 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 | playwright_mcp | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 87K | ★ 864 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-13 | 2026-11-12 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.1K | ⑂ 115 |
| 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 playwright_mcp if
- You want the playwright_mcp feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and playwright_mcp 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 playwright_mcp
Other AI browser agents get captchas. This one is invisible to anti bots. Two ways to use this browser agent 1. From your assistant, over MCP Windows, in PowerShell: Linux: Then install it in your assistant. Claude Code: Codex: Gemini CLI: 2. Standalone: the web UI We bring the interface, you bring an OpenRouter key. Chat on the left, the live browser on the right. Windows, in PowerShell: Linux: Then open and type the same thing. What to ask a web browsing agent Anything that needs real web automation: a browser rather than an API, and a person's judgement about what is on the page. Go to . One way, Milan to…
read the full playwright_mcp overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Crawl4AI or playwright_mcp more popular?
Crawl4AI has 87,329 GitHub stars and playwright_mcp has 864. Crawl4AI has the larger community by that measure.
Are Crawl4AI and playwright_mcp free?
Both are open source. Crawl4AI is licensed under Apache-2.0 and playwright_mcp under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Crawl4AI and playwright_mcp?
Crawl4AI is written in Python and playwright_mcp in Python. 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 playwright_mcp?
Choose Crawl4AI if you want the larger community (87,329 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose playwright_mcp if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.