head to head · open source
EasySpider vs selectolax
EasySpider has 44,565 GitHub stars, 5,387 forks, 271 open issues and last shipped yesterday. selectolax has 1,678 stars, 91 forks, 10 open issues and last shipped yesterday. EasySpider leads on adoption by 2,556% (44,565 vs 1,678 stars). EasySpider is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0; selectolax is written in Cython under MIT. EasySpider has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, selectolax 5%. selectolax was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (crawler, 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 | selectolax | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 45K | ★ 1.7K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | Cython |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.4K | ⑂ 91 |
| 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 selectolax if
- You want the selectolax feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Cython
- You evaluated both and selectolax 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 selectolax
A fast HTML5 parser with CSS selectors, written in Cython, using Modest and Lexbor engines. Installation From PyPI using pip: If installation fails due to compilation errors, you may need to install Cython: This usually happens when you try to install an outdated version of selectolax on a newer version of Python. Development version from GitHub: How to compile selectolax while developing: Basic examples Here are some basic examples to get you started with selectolax: Parsing HTML and extracting text: Using advanced CSS selectors Using lexbor contains CSS pseudo class to match text More examples Available backend…
read the full selectolax overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is EasySpider or selectolax more popular?
EasySpider has 44,565 GitHub stars and selectolax has 1,678. EasySpider has the larger community by that measure.
Are EasySpider and selectolax free?
Both are open source. EasySpider is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and selectolax under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between EasySpider and selectolax?
EasySpider is written in JavaScript and selectolax in Cython. 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 selectolax?
Choose EasySpider if you want the larger community (44,565 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose selectolax if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.