head to head · open source
katana vs ruia
katana has 17,828 GitHub stars, 1,224 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. ruia has 1,739 stars, 185 forks, 9 open issues and last shipped 13 days ago. katana leads on adoption by 925% (17,828 vs 1,739 stars). katana is written in Go under MIT; ruia is written in Python under Apache-2.0. katana has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, ruia 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 | ruia | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 18K | ★ 1.7K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-09 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 185 |
| 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 ruia if
- You want the ruia 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 ruia 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 ruia
Ruia 🕸️ Async Python 3.6+ web scraping micro framework based on asyncio. ⚡ Write less, run faster. Overview Ruia is an async web scraping micro framework, written with asyncio and aiohttp , aims to make crawling url as convenient as possible. Write less, run faster : Documentation: [中文文档][doc cn] [documentation][doc en] Organization: [python ruia][Organization] Plugin: awesome ruia(Any contributions you make are greatly appreciated !) Features Easy : Declarative programming Fast : Powered by asyncio Extensible : Middlewares and plugins Powerful : JavaScript support Installation Tutorials 1. Overview 2…
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Frequently asked questions
Is katana or ruia more popular?
katana has 17,828 GitHub stars and ruia has 1,739. katana has the larger community by that measure.
Are katana and ruia free?
Both are open source. katana is licensed under MIT and ruia under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between katana and ruia?
katana is written in Go and ruia 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 ruia?
Choose katana if you want the larger community (17,828 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose ruia if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.