head to head · open source
crawlee vs crawlee-python
crawlee has 26,327 GitHub stars, 1,742 forks, 135 open issues and last shipped yesterday. crawlee-python has 9,642 stars, 820 forks, 100 open issues and last shipped yesterday. crawlee leads on adoption by 173% (26,327 vs 9,642 stars). crawlee is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; crawlee-python is written in Python under Apache-2.0. crawlee has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, crawlee-python 9%. crawlee-python was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 8 topic tags (apify, automation, crawler, crawling), 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
| crawlee | crawlee-python | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 9.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 820 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick crawlee if
- You weight community size — 26K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick crawlee-python if
- You want the crawlee-python feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and crawlee-python fits your workflow better
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 →
About crawlee-python
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 almost 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 persistently store it in machine readable formats, without having to worry about the technical details. And thanks to rich configuration options, you can tweak almost any aspect of Crawlee to suit your project's needs if the default settings don't cut it. 👉 View full…
read the full crawlee-python overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is crawlee or crawlee-python more popular?
crawlee has 26,327 GitHub stars and crawlee-python has 9,642. crawlee has the larger community by that measure.
Are crawlee and crawlee-python free?
Both are open source. crawlee is licensed under Apache-2.0 and crawlee-python under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between crawlee and crawlee-python?
crawlee is written in TypeScript and crawlee-python 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, crawlee or crawlee-python?
Choose crawlee if you want the larger community (26,327 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose crawlee-python if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.