head to head · open source
CloakBrowser vs crawlee
CloakBrowser has 32,693 GitHub stars, 2,719 forks, 164 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. crawlee has 26,317 stars, 1,740 forks, 135 open issues and last shipped yesterday. CloakBrowser leads on adoption by 24% (32,693 vs 26,317 stars). CloakBrowser is written in Python under MIT; crawlee is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. CloakBrowser has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, crawlee 7%. crawlee was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (playwright), 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
| CloakBrowser | crawlee | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 26K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 1.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick CloakBrowser if
- You weight community size — 33K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick crawlee if
- You want the crawlee feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and crawlee fits your workflow better
About CloakBrowser
Stealth Chromium that passes every bot detection test. Not a patched config. Not a JS injection. A real Chromium binary with fingerprints modified at the C++ source level. Antibot systems score it as a normal browser — because it is a normal browser. Cloudflare Turnstile — 3 live tests passing (headed mode, macOS) Drop in Playwright/Puppeteer replacement for Python and JavaScript. Same API, same code — just swap the import. 3 lines of code, 30 seconds to unblock. 87 source level C++ patches — canvas, WebGL, audio, fonts, GPU, screen, WebRTC, network timing, automation signals, CDP input behavior humanize=True —…
read the full CloakBrowser overview →
About crawlee
A web scraping and browser automation library Crawlee covers your crawling and scraping end to end and helps you build reliable scrapers. Fast. Your crawlers will appear human like and fly under the radar of modern bot protections even with the default configuration. Crawlee gives you the tools to crawl the web for links, scrape data, and store it to disk or cloud while staying configurable to suit your project's needs. Crawlee is available as the crawlee NPM package. 👉 View full documentation, guides and examples on the Crawlee project website 👈 Do you prefer 🐍 Python instead of JavaScript? 👉 Checkout…
read the full crawlee overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is CloakBrowser or crawlee more popular?
CloakBrowser has 32,693 GitHub stars and crawlee has 26,317. CloakBrowser has the larger community by that measure.
Are CloakBrowser and crawlee free?
Both are open source. CloakBrowser is licensed under MIT and crawlee under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between CloakBrowser and crawlee?
CloakBrowser is written in Python and crawlee 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, CloakBrowser or crawlee?
Choose CloakBrowser if you want the larger community (32,693 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose crawlee if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.