head to head · open source
Crawl4AI vs Scrapling
Crawl4AI has 83,747 GitHub stars, 8,660 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Scrapling has 81,798 stars, 8,307 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Crawl4AI leads on adoption by 2% (83,747 vs 81,798 stars). Crawl4AI is written in Python under Apache-2.0; Scrapling is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause. Crawl4AI has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, Scrapling 10%. 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 | Scrapling | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 84K | ★ 82K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.7K | ⑂ 8.3K |
| 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 Scrapling if
- You want the Scrapling feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and Scrapling 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 Scrapling
Scrapling is an adaptive Python web scraping framework for developers, data teams, and regular users who need anything from a single request to a full scale crawl without rewriting selectors every time a site changes.
read the full Scrapling overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Crawl4AI or Scrapling more popular?
Crawl4AI has 83,747 GitHub stars and Scrapling has 81,798. Crawl4AI has the larger community by that measure.
Are Crawl4AI and Scrapling free?
Both are open source. Crawl4AI is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Scrapling under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Crawl4AI and Scrapling?
Crawl4AI is written in Python and Scrapling 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 Scrapling?
Choose Crawl4AI if you want the larger community (83,747 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Scrapling if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.