head to head · open source
crawlee vs x-crawl
crawlee has 26,327 GitHub stars, 1,742 forks, 135 open issues and last shipped yesterday. x-crawl has 1,890 stars, 116 forks, 16 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. crawlee leads on adoption by 1,293% (26,327 vs 1,890 stars). crawlee is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; x-crawl is written in TypeScript under MIT. crawlee has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, x-crawl 6%. crawlee was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (crawler, javascript, nodejs, puppeteer), 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 | x-crawl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 1.9K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 116 |
| 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 x-crawl if
- You want the x-crawl feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and x-crawl 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 x-crawl
x crawl · English 简体中文 x crawl is a flexible Node.js AI assisted crawler library. Flexible usage and powerful AI assistance functions make crawler work more efficient, intelligent and convenient. It consists of two parts: Crawler: It consists of a crawler API and various functions that can work normally even without relying on AI. AI: Integrate ollama and openai, AI simplifies many tedious operations. If you find x crawl helpful, or you like x crawl, you can give x crawl repository a like on GitHub A star. Your support is the driving force for our continuous improvement! thank you for your support! Features 🤖…
read the full x-crawl overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is crawlee or x-crawl more popular?
crawlee has 26,327 GitHub stars and x-crawl has 1,890. crawlee has the larger community by that measure.
Are crawlee and x-crawl free?
Both are open source. crawlee is licensed under Apache-2.0 and x-crawl under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between crawlee and x-crawl?
crawlee is written in TypeScript and x-crawl 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 x-crawl?
Choose crawlee if you want the larger community (26,327 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose x-crawl if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.