head to head · open source
dots vs node-crawler
dots has 32,357 GitHub stars, 4,739 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. node-crawler has 6,796 stars, 862 forks, 29 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. dots leads on adoption by 376% (32,357 vs 6,796 stars). dots is written in TypeScript under MIT; node-crawler is written in TypeScript under MIT. dots has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, node-crawler 13%. 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 | node-crawler | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 6.8K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-31 | 2026-06-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.7K | ⑂ 862 |
| 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 node-crawler if
- You want the node-crawler feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and node-crawler 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 node-crawler
[![NPM download][download image]][download url] [![Package Quality][quality image]][quality url] [quality image]: [quality url]: [download image]: [download url]: Crawler v2 : Advanced and Typescript version of node crawler Features: Server side DOM & automatic jQuery insertion with Cheerio (default), Configurable pool size and retries, Control rate limit, Priority queue of requests, let crawler deal for you with charset detection and conversion, If you have prior experience with Crawler v1, for fast migration, please proceed to the section Differences and Breaking Changes. Use with AI agents This package ships…
read the full node-crawler overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is dots or node-crawler more popular?
dots has 32,357 GitHub stars and node-crawler has 6,796. dots has the larger community by that measure.
Are dots and node-crawler free?
Both are open source. dots is licensed under MIT and node-crawler under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between dots and node-crawler?
dots is written in TypeScript and node-crawler 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, dots or node-crawler?
Choose dots if you want the larger community (32,357 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose node-crawler if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.