head to head · open source
dots vs colly
dots has 32,357 GitHub stars, 4,739 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. colly has 25,572 stars, 1,859 forks, 195 open issues and last shipped 18 days ago. dots leads on adoption by 27% (32,357 vs 25,572 stars). dots is written in TypeScript under MIT; colly is written in Go under Apache-2.0. dots has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, colly 7%. dots 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
| dots | colly | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 26K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-31 | 2026-10-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.7K | ⑂ 1.9K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick dots if
- You weight community size — 32K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick colly if
- You want the colly feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and colly fits your workflow better
About dots
dots Every AI agent is a model and a browser. You can swap the model with one flag. The browser is what the website sees. Windows, in PowerShell: Linux: Then open The conversation on the left, the browser on the right, live. It all comes down to the browser When a web agent fails, the model is rarely why. The page never loaded, a challenge appeared, the login expired, the click did not land. All of that happens in the browser, before the model gets to think. So dots is built around one: A real Firefox engine, patched in C++. The fingerprint is decided inside the engine, not painted over with JavaScript that a…
About colly
Colly Lightning Fast and Elegant Scraping Framework for Gophers Colly provides a clean interface to write any kind of crawler/scraper/spider. With Colly you can easily extract structured data from websites, which can be used for a wide range of applications, like data mining, data processing or archiving. Sponsors NodeMaven: The most efficient proxy provider for Web Scrapping and Automation with the Highest Quality IP on the market. Why NodeMaven? 99.9% uptime ZIP Targeting IP filtering: all proxies have fraud score 1k request/sec on a single core) Manages request delays and maximum concurrency per domain…
read the full colly overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is dots or colly more popular?
dots has 32,357 GitHub stars and colly has 25,572. dots has the larger community by that measure.
Are dots and colly free?
Both are open source. dots is licensed under MIT and colly under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between dots and colly?
dots is written in TypeScript and colly in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, dots or colly?
Choose dots if you want the larger community (32,357 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose colly if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.