head to head · open source
firecrawl vs Browser Use
firecrawl has 197,942 GitHub stars, 10,457 forks, 621 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Browser Use has 119,857 stars, 13,358 forks, 421 open issues and last shipped yesterday. firecrawl leads on adoption by 65% (197,942 vs 119,857 stars). firecrawl is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; Browser Use is written in Python under MIT. firecrawl has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, Browser Use 11%. firecrawl was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ai-agents, llm), 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
| firecrawl | Browser Use | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 198K | ★ 120K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 13K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick firecrawl if
- You weight community size — 198K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Browser Use if
- You want the Browser Use feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and Browser Use fits your workflow better
About firecrawl
🔥 Firecrawl The API to search, scrape, and interact with the web at scale. 🔥 The web context API to find sources, extract content, and turn it into clean Markdown or structured data your agents can ship with. Open source and available as a hosted service. Pst. Hey, you, join our stargazers :) Why Firecrawl? Industry leading reliability : Covers 96% of the web, including JS heavy pages — no proxy headaches, just clean data (see benchmarks) Blazingly fast : P95 latency of 3.4s across millions of pages, built for real time agents and dynamic apps LLM ready output : Clean markdown, structured JSON, screenshots…
read the full firecrawl overview →
About Browser Use
Navigate the web like a human does. Find an available slot, pick a date and time, handle the CAPTCHA, and book a driving test. Explore more demos and prompts ↗ Which Browser Use do I need? Path 1: Fully Hosted Cloud: Scale up with a fully hosted agent and browser. Path 2: CLI: Automate your own browser tasks. Path 3: Python Library: Run the open source Browser Use agent locally from your own code. Quickstart Path 1: Fully Hosted Cloud Scale browser automation with our hosted agent, stealth browsers, and infrastructure for profiles, recordings, and data policies. Get started with the API ↗ New Google, GitHub, or…
read the full Browser Use overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is firecrawl or Browser Use more popular?
firecrawl has 197,942 GitHub stars and Browser Use has 119,857. firecrawl has the larger community by that measure.
Are firecrawl and Browser Use free?
Both are open source. firecrawl is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Browser Use under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between firecrawl and Browser Use?
firecrawl is written in TypeScript and Browser Use 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, firecrawl or Browser Use?
Choose firecrawl if you want the larger community (197,942 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Browser Use if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.