head to head · open source
katana vs freeproxy
katana has 17,531 GitHub stars, 1,185 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. freeproxy has 547 stars, 95 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped today. katana leads on adoption by 3,105% (17,531 vs 547 stars). katana is written in Go under MIT; freeproxy is written in Python under Apache-2.0. katana has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, freeproxy 17%. freeproxy 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
| katana | freeproxy | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 18K | ★ 547 |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-14 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 95 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick katana if
- You weight community size — 18K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick freeproxy if
- You want the freeproxy feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and freeproxy fits your workflow better
About katana
Katana is an open source, MIT licensed crawling and spidering framework written in Go, built for security engineers and automation pipelines that need to map web applications at scale rather than explore them by hand.
read the full katana overview →
About freeproxy
FreeProxy is an Apache 2.0 Python project that continuously discovers, verifies, and republishes free HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS4, and SOCKS5 proxies scraped from dozens of public share sources, aimed at developers running crawlers, spiders, and data analysis pipelines who need a changing pool of proxies without paying a provider.
read the full freeproxy overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is katana or freeproxy more popular?
katana has 17,531 GitHub stars and freeproxy has 547. katana has the larger community by that measure.
Are katana and freeproxy free?
Both are open source. katana is licensed under MIT and freeproxy under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between katana and freeproxy?
katana is written in Go and freeproxy 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, katana or freeproxy?
Choose katana if you want the larger community (17,531 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose freeproxy if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.