head to head · open source
katana vs grab
katana has 17,794 GitHub stars, 1,215 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. grab has 2,462 stars, 271 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 1.1 years ago. katana leads on adoption by 623% (17,794 vs 2,462 stars). katana is written in Go under MIT; grab is written in Python under MIT. katana has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, grab 11%. katana 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 | grab | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 18K | ★ 2.5K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2025-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 271 |
| 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 grab if
- You want the grab feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and grab fits your workflow better
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 →
About grab
Grab Update (2025 year) Since 2018 (which is the year of most recent Grab release) I have tried to do large refactoring of code base of Grab library. Which ended up with semi working product which nobody uses, including me. I have decided to reset all project files to the state of most recent pypi release 0.6.41 dated by june 2018. At least, now the code base corresponds to live version of the product which is being used by some people, according to pypi stats. I've updated Grab code base and code base of its dependencies to be compatible with Python 2.7 and Python 3.13 (and, hopefully, all py versions between…
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Frequently asked questions
Is katana or grab more popular?
katana has 17,794 GitHub stars and grab has 2,462. katana has the larger community by that measure.
Are katana and grab free?
Both are open source. katana is licensed under MIT and grab under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between katana and grab?
katana is written in Go and grab 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 grab?
Choose katana if you want the larger community (17,794 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose grab if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.