head to head · open source
Crawl4AI vs EasySpider
Crawl4AI has 86,783 GitHub stars, 9,043 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped yesterday. EasySpider has 44,765 stars, 5,392 forks, 271 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Crawl4AI leads on adoption by 94% (86,783 vs 44,765 stars). Crawl4AI is written in Python under Apache-2.0; EasySpider is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0. Crawl4AI has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, EasySpider 12%. 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
| Crawl4AI | EasySpider | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 87K | ★ 45K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.0K | ⑂ 5.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Crawl4AI if
- You weight community size — 87K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick EasySpider if
- You want the EasySpider feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and EasySpider fits your workflow better
About Crawl4AI
🚀🤖 Crawl4AI: Open source LLM Friendly Web Crawler & Scraper. 🚀 Crawl4AI Cloud API — Closed Beta (Launching Soon) Reliable, large scale web extraction, now built to be drastically more cost effective than any of the existing solutions. 👉 Apply here for early access We’ll be onboarding in phases and working closely with early users. Limited slots. Crawl4AI turns the web into clean, LLM ready Markdown for RAG, agents, and data pipelines. Fast, controllable, battle tested by a 50k+ star community. ✨ Check out latest update v0.9.3 ✨ New in v0.9.3 : Security release. Closes five coordinated disclosure advisories…
read the full Crawl4AI overview →
About EasySpider
易采集/EasySpider: Visual Code Free Web Crawler 一个 完全免费 （ 包括商业使用和二次开发 ）的可视化浏览器自动化测试/数据采集/爬虫软件，可以使用图形化界面，无代码可视化的设计和执行任务。只需要在网页上选择自己想要操作的内容并根据提示框操作即可完成任务的设计和执行。同时软件还可以单独以命令行的方式进行执行，从而可以很方便的嵌入到其他系统中。 A completely free (including for commercial use and secondary development) visual browser automation test/data collection/crawler software, which can be used to design and execute tasks in a code free visual way. You only need to select the content you want to operate on the web page and follow the prompts to complete the design and execution of the task. At the same time, the software can also be executed separately in…
read the full EasySpider overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Crawl4AI or EasySpider more popular?
Crawl4AI has 86,783 GitHub stars and EasySpider has 44,765. Crawl4AI has the larger community by that measure.
Are Crawl4AI and EasySpider free?
Both are open source. Crawl4AI is licensed under Apache-2.0 and EasySpider under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Crawl4AI and EasySpider?
Crawl4AI is written in Python and EasySpider in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Crawl4AI or EasySpider?
Choose Crawl4AI if you want the larger community (86,783 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose EasySpider if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.