head to head · open source
EasySpider vs ferret
EasySpider has 44,558 GitHub stars, 5,386 forks, 271 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ferret has 6,011 stars, 324 forks, 12 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. EasySpider leads on adoption by 641% (44,558 vs 6,011 stars). EasySpider is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0; ferret is written in Go under Apache-2.0. EasySpider has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, ferret 5%. EasySpider was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (html), 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 | ferret | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 45K | ★ 6.0K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.4K | ⑂ 324 |
| 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 ferret if
- You want the ferret 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 ferret 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 ferret
Ferret is a declarative data automation language and embeddable Go runtime for structured extraction workflows, built for Go developers who need to query, transform, and synchronize structured data across browsers, APIs, databases, and documents from inside their own applications.
read the full ferret overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is EasySpider or ferret more popular?
EasySpider has 44,558 GitHub stars and ferret has 6,011. EasySpider has the larger community by that measure.
Are EasySpider and ferret free?
Both are open source. EasySpider is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and ferret under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between EasySpider and ferret?
EasySpider is written in JavaScript and ferret 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 ferret?
Choose EasySpider if you want the larger community (44,558 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose ferret if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.