head to head · open source
Crawl4AI vs trawl
Crawl4AI has 83,782 GitHub stars, 8,664 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. trawl has 821 stars, 45 forks, 7 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Crawl4AI leads on adoption by 10,105% (83,782 vs 821 stars). Crawl4AI is written in Python under Apache-2.0; trawl is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. Crawl4AI has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, trawl 5%. trawl 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 | trawl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 84K | ★ 821 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.7K | ⑂ 45 |
| 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 trawl if
- You want the trawl feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and trawl 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 trawl
TRAWL is a self hosted, AGPL 3.0 web scraping engine written in TypeScript that solves JavaScript challenges and CAPTCHAs on behalf of other applications, and it is built for self hosters who run scraping pipelines, media automation, or agent tooling on their own hardware.
read the full trawl overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Crawl4AI or trawl more popular?
Crawl4AI has 83,782 GitHub stars and trawl has 821. Crawl4AI has the larger community by that measure.
Are Crawl4AI and trawl free?
Both are open source. Crawl4AI is licensed under Apache-2.0 and trawl under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Crawl4AI and trawl?
Crawl4AI is written in Python and trawl in TypeScript. 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 trawl?
Choose Crawl4AI if you want the larger community (83,782 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose trawl if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.