head to head · open source
Crawl4AI vs selectolax
Crawl4AI has 83,782 GitHub stars, 8,664 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. selectolax has 1,678 stars, 91 forks, 10 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Crawl4AI leads on adoption by 4,893% (83,782 vs 1,678 stars). Crawl4AI is written in Python under Apache-2.0; selectolax is written in Cython under MIT. Crawl4AI has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, selectolax 5%. selectolax 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 | selectolax | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 84K | ★ 1.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Cython |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.7K | ⑂ 91 |
| 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 selectolax if
- You want the selectolax feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Cython
- You evaluated both and selectolax 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 selectolax
A fast HTML5 parser with CSS selectors, written in Cython, using Modest and Lexbor engines. Installation From PyPI using pip: If installation fails due to compilation errors, you may need to install Cython: This usually happens when you try to install an outdated version of selectolax on a newer version of Python. Development version from GitHub: How to compile selectolax while developing: Basic examples Here are some basic examples to get you started with selectolax: Parsing HTML and extracting text: Using advanced CSS selectors Using lexbor contains CSS pseudo class to match text More examples Available backend…
read the full selectolax overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Crawl4AI or selectolax more popular?
Crawl4AI has 83,782 GitHub stars and selectolax has 1,678. Crawl4AI has the larger community by that measure.
Are Crawl4AI and selectolax free?
Both are open source. Crawl4AI is licensed under Apache-2.0 and selectolax under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Crawl4AI and selectolax?
Crawl4AI is written in Python and selectolax in Cython. 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 selectolax?
Choose Crawl4AI if you want the larger community (83,782 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose selectolax if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.