head to head · open source
crawlee vs curl_cffi
crawlee has 25,823 GitHub stars, 1,673 forks, 135 open issues and last shipped yesterday. curl_cffi has 6,507 stars, 552 forks, 72 open issues and last shipped yesterday. crawlee leads on adoption by 297% (25,823 vs 6,507 stars). crawlee is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; curl_cffi is written in Python under MIT. crawlee has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, curl_cffi 8%. crawlee 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
| crawlee | curl_cffi | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 552 |
| 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 curl_cffi if
- You want the curl_cffi feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and curl_cffi fits your workflow better
About crawlee
Crawlee is a web scraping and browser automation library for Node.js, written in TypeScript and published on npm as the crawlee package. It lives in the JavaScript and TypeScript ecosystem, and it covers crawling and scraping end to end: fetching pages, following links, extracting data, and storing the results to disk or to the cloud. The project also has a Python counterpart, Crawlee for Python, maintained alongside it by Apify.
read the full crawlee overview →
About curl_cffi
curl cffi is a Python HTTP client that binds the curl impersonate fork through cffi so Python programs can impersonate browser TLS/JA3 and HTTP/2 fingerprints, and it is aimed at developers whose scripts are blocked by bot protection despite apparently correct requests.
read the full curl_cffi overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is crawlee or curl_cffi more popular?
crawlee has 25,823 GitHub stars and curl_cffi has 6,507. crawlee has the larger community by that measure.
Are crawlee and curl_cffi free?
Both are open source. crawlee is licensed under Apache-2.0 and curl_cffi under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between crawlee and curl_cffi?
crawlee is written in TypeScript and curl_cffi 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 curl_cffi?
Choose crawlee if you want the larger community (25,823 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose curl_cffi if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.