head to head · open source
EasySpider vs colly
EasySpider has 44,558 GitHub stars, 5,386 forks, 271 open issues and last shipped yesterday. colly has 25,520 stars, 1,862 forks, 195 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. EasySpider leads on adoption by 75% (44,558 vs 25,520 stars). EasySpider is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0; colly is written in Go under Apache-2.0. EasySpider has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, colly 7%. EasySpider was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (crawler), 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
| EasySpider | colly | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 45K | ★ 26K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.4K | ⑂ 1.9K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick EasySpider if
- You weight community size — 45K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- 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 EasySpider
EasySpider is a visual, code free web crawler and browser automation tool distributed on GitHub under the AGPL 3.0 license. It is written in JavaScript as a graphical application and lives in the web scraping and data extraction ecosystem, sitting alongside browser automation testing tools. It also carries the alias ServiceWrapper, described as an intelligent service encapsulation system for web applications. Development spans roughly six years, with the latest push recorded in September 2026.
read the full EasySpider overview →
About colly
Colly is an open source scraping and crawling framework written in Go, distributed under the Apache 2.0 license. It lives in the Go ecosystem and is consumed as a library rather than a standalone application: the README describes it as providing a clean interface for writing any kind of crawler, scraper, or spider, and the project's own topics list it as a crawler, crawling framework, scraper, scraping tool, and spider. The repository has been public for roughly nine years, carries 25,516 stars and 1,862 forks, and its most recent push was on 2 September 2026. Documentation and examples are hosted at go colly.org…
read the full colly overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is EasySpider or colly more popular?
EasySpider has 44,558 GitHub stars and colly has 25,520. EasySpider has the larger community by that measure.
Are EasySpider and colly free?
Both are open source. EasySpider is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and colly under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between EasySpider and colly?
EasySpider is written in JavaScript 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, EasySpider or colly?
Choose EasySpider if you want the larger community (44,558 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose colly if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.