head to head · open source
EasySpider vs xxl-crawler
EasySpider has 44,565 GitHub stars, 5,387 forks, 271 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. xxl-crawler has 758 stars, 318 forks, 7 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. EasySpider leads on adoption by 5,779% (44,565 vs 758 stars). EasySpider is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0; xxl-crawler is written in Java under Apache-2.0. EasySpider has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, xxl-crawler 42%. 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 | xxl-crawler | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 45K | ★ 758 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.4K | ⑂ 318 |
| 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 xxl-crawler if
- You want the xxl-crawler feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and xxl-crawler 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 xxl-crawler
XXL CRAWLER is a lightweight, open source Java web crawler framework that lets a developer start a multi threaded crawler with a single line of code and map collected page data into Java objects through annotations, built for Java teams that need to gather web data without adopting a heavyweight scraping platform.
read the full xxl-crawler overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is EasySpider or xxl-crawler more popular?
EasySpider has 44,565 GitHub stars and xxl-crawler has 758. EasySpider has the larger community by that measure.
Are EasySpider and xxl-crawler free?
Both are open source. EasySpider is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and xxl-crawler under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between EasySpider and xxl-crawler?
EasySpider is written in JavaScript and xxl-crawler in Java. 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 xxl-crawler?
Choose EasySpider if you want the larger community (44,565 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose xxl-crawler if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.