head to head · open source
katana vs icrawler
katana has 17,794 GitHub stars, 1,215 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. icrawler has 935 stars, 181 forks, 31 open issues and last shipped 11 months ago. katana leads on adoption by 1,803% (17,794 vs 935 stars). katana is written in Go under MIT; icrawler is written in Python under MIT. katana has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, icrawler 19%. 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 | icrawler | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 18K | ★ 935 |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2025-12-10 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 181 |
| 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 icrawler if
- You want the icrawler feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and icrawler 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 icrawler
icrawler ======== .. image:: :target: :alt: PyPI Version .. image:: :target: :alt: Anaconda Version .. image:: :alt: Python Version .. image:: :alt: License Introduction Documentation: Try it with pip install icrawler or conda install c hellock icrawler . This package is a mini framework of web crawlers. With modularization design, it is easy to use and extend. It supports media data like images and videos very well, and can also be applied to texts and other type of files. Scrapy is heavy and powerful, while icrawler is tiny and flexible. With this package, you can write a multiple thread crawler easily by…
read the full icrawler overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is katana or icrawler more popular?
katana has 17,794 GitHub stars and icrawler has 935. katana has the larger community by that measure.
Are katana and icrawler free?
Both are open source. katana is licensed under MIT and icrawler under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between katana and icrawler?
katana is written in Go and icrawler 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 icrawler?
Choose katana if you want the larger community (17,794 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose icrawler if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.