head to head · open source
Crawl4AI vs katana
Crawl4AI has 86,783 GitHub stars, 9,043 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped yesterday. katana has 17,786 stars, 1,213 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Crawl4AI leads on adoption by 388% (86,783 vs 17,786 stars). Crawl4AI is written in Python under Apache-2.0; katana is written in Go under MIT. Crawl4AI has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, katana 7%. Crawl4AI 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
| Crawl4AI | katana | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 87K | ★ 18K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.0K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Crawl4AI if
- You weight community size — 87K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick katana if
- You want the katana feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and katana fits your workflow better
About Crawl4AI
🚀🤖 Crawl4AI: Open source LLM Friendly Web Crawler & Scraper. 🚀 Crawl4AI Cloud API — Closed Beta (Launching Soon) Reliable, large scale web extraction, now built to be drastically more cost effective than any of the existing solutions. 👉 Apply here for early access We’ll be onboarding in phases and working closely with early users. Limited slots. Crawl4AI turns the web into clean, LLM ready Markdown for RAG, agents, and data pipelines. Fast, controllable, battle tested by a 50k+ star community. ✨ Check out latest update v0.9.3 ✨ New in v0.9.3 : Security release. Closes five coordinated disclosure advisories…
read the full Crawl4AI overview →
About katana
A next generation crawling and spidering framework Features • Installation • Usage • Scope • Config • Filters • Join Discord Features Fast And fully configurable web crawling Standard and Headless mode JavaScript parsing / crawling Customizable automatic form filling Scope control Preconfigured field / Regex Knowledge base ML page type / form classification (auto downloaded model) Customizable output Preconfigured fields INPUT STDIN , URL and LIST OUTPUT STDOUT , FILE and JSON Installation katana requires Go 1.26+ to install successfully. If you encounter any installation issues, we recommend trying with the…
read the full katana overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Crawl4AI or katana more popular?
Crawl4AI has 86,783 GitHub stars and katana has 17,786. Crawl4AI has the larger community by that measure.
Are Crawl4AI and katana free?
Both are open source. Crawl4AI is licensed under Apache-2.0 and katana under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Crawl4AI and katana?
Crawl4AI is written in Python and katana 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, Crawl4AI or katana?
Choose Crawl4AI if you want the larger community (86,783 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose katana if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.