head to head · open source
EasySpider vs skills
EasySpider has 44,558 GitHub stars, 5,386 forks, 271 open issues and last shipped yesterday. skills has 5,946 stars, 295 forks, 7 open issues and last shipped 25 days ago. EasySpider leads on adoption by 649% (44,558 vs 5,946 stars). EasySpider is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0; skills is written in Python under MIT. EasySpider has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, skills 5%. EasySpider was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | skills | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 45K | ★ 5.9K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.4K | ⑂ 295 |
| 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 skills if
- You want the skills feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and skills 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 skills
BrowserAct Skills is a browser automation CLI built for AI agents, distributed as an open source Python project under the MIT license. It lives in the agent infrastructure ecosystem, alongside tooling for Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and other agent clients, and it is catalogued here under Data Extraction and Web Scraping. The project has gathered roughly 5,900 stars and 293 forks since it was published about a year ago, with a small open issue count and an active last push.
read the full skills overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is EasySpider or skills more popular?
EasySpider has 44,558 GitHub stars and skills has 5,946. EasySpider has the larger community by that measure.
Are EasySpider and skills free?
Both are open source. EasySpider is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and skills under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between EasySpider and skills?
EasySpider is written in JavaScript and skills 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 skills?
Choose EasySpider if you want the larger community (44,558 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose skills if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.