head to head · open source
EasySpider vs crawlee-python
EasySpider has 44,558 GitHub stars, 5,386 forks, 271 open issues and last shipped yesterday. crawlee-python has 9,535 stars, 807 forks, 100 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. EasySpider leads on adoption by 367% (44,558 vs 9,535 stars). EasySpider is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0; crawlee-python is written in Python under Apache-2.0. EasySpider has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, crawlee-python 8%. 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 | crawlee-python | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 45K | ★ 9.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.4K | ⑂ 807 |
| 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 crawlee-python if
- You want the crawlee-python feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and crawlee-python 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 crawlee-python
Crawlee for Python is an open source, Apache 2.0 licensed web scraping and browser automation library that lets Python developers build reliable crawlers for extracting data for AI, LLM, RAG, and GPT pipelines, and it is aimed at anyone who needs to crawl sites at scale without hand writing the surrounding infrastructure.
read the full crawlee-python overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is EasySpider or crawlee-python more popular?
EasySpider has 44,558 GitHub stars and crawlee-python has 9,535. EasySpider has the larger community by that measure.
Are EasySpider and crawlee-python free?
Both are open source. EasySpider is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and crawlee-python under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between EasySpider and crawlee-python?
EasySpider is written in JavaScript and crawlee-python in Python. 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 crawlee-python?
Choose EasySpider if you want the larger community (44,558 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose crawlee-python if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.