head to head · open source
Crawl4AI vs Skyvern
Crawl4AI has 86,861 GitHub stars, 9,046 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Skyvern has 23,336 stars, 2,236 forks, 234 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Crawl4AI leads on adoption by 272% (86,861 vs 23,336 stars). Crawl4AI is written in Python under Apache-2.0; Skyvern is written in Python under AGPL-3.0. Crawl4AI has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, Skyvern 10%. Skyvern was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (ai, llm, playwright, python), 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 | Skyvern | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 87K | ★ 23K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.0K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| 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 Skyvern if
- You want the Skyvern feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and Skyvern 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 Skyvern
🐉 Automate Browser based workflows using LLMs and Computer Vision 🐉 Skyvern automates browser based workflows using LLMs and computer vision. It provides a Playwright compatible SDK that adds AI functionality on top of playwright, as well as a no code workflow builder to help both technical and non technical users automate manual workflows on any website, replacing brittle or unreliable automation solutions. Traditional approaches to browser automations required writing custom scripts for websites, often relying on DOM parsing and XPath based interactions which would break whenever the website layouts changed…
read the full Skyvern overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Crawl4AI or Skyvern more popular?
Crawl4AI has 86,861 GitHub stars and Skyvern has 23,336. Crawl4AI has the larger community by that measure.
Are Crawl4AI and Skyvern free?
Both are open source. Crawl4AI is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Skyvern under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Crawl4AI and Skyvern?
Crawl4AI is written in Python and Skyvern 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 Skyvern?
Choose Crawl4AI if you want the larger community (86,861 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Skyvern if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.