head to head · open source
crawlee vs Maxun
crawlee has 26,317 GitHub stars, 1,740 forks, 135 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Maxun has 18,134 stars, 1,564 forks, 105 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. crawlee leads on adoption by 45% (26,317 vs 18,134 stars). crawlee is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; Maxun is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. crawlee has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, Maxun 9%. crawlee was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (automation, crawler, crawling, 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
| crawlee | Maxun | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 18K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| 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 Maxun if
- You want the Maxun 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 Maxun 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 Maxun
Maxun Turn Any Website Into A Structured API ✨ The unified open source no code platform for real time web scraping, crawling, search and AI data extraction ✨ Go To App • Documentation • Website • Discord • Watch Tutorials Sponsors Webshare Webshare gives you instant access to a proxy pool of 80M+ ethically sourced IPs across 195+ countries, with rotating residential, static ISP, and datacenter options plus a full API. It includes a 100+ Gbps backbone, country/city/state/ZIP/ASN level targeting, and requires no credit card to start. Free tier: 10 proxies + 1GB/month · Discount: MAXUN20 Get 20% off your first…
read the full Maxun overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is crawlee or Maxun more popular?
crawlee has 26,317 GitHub stars and Maxun has 18,134. crawlee has the larger community by that measure.
Are crawlee and Maxun free?
Both are open source. crawlee is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Maxun under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between crawlee and Maxun?
crawlee is written in TypeScript and Maxun 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, crawlee or Maxun?
Choose crawlee if you want the larger community (26,317 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Maxun if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.