head to head · open source
Scrapegraph-ai vs katana
Scrapegraph-ai has 31,056 GitHub stars, 3,126 forks, 16 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. katana has 17,518 stars, 1,183 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Scrapegraph-ai leads on adoption by 77% (31,056 vs 17,518 stars). Scrapegraph-ai is written in Python under MIT; katana is written in Go under MIT. Scrapegraph-ai has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, katana 7%. 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
| Scrapegraph-ai | katana | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 18K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-07 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Scrapegraph-ai if
- You weight community size — 31K stars and counting
- You want the MIT 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 Scrapegraph-ai
ScrapeGraphAI is an open source Python library for web scraping that combines large language models with direct graph logic to build scraping pipelines. It lives in the Python ecosystem and is distributed under the MIT license, with the reference package published on PyPI as scrapegraphai . Rather than requiring a developer to hand write selectors for every page, the library accepts a natural language prompt describing the information to extract, alongside a source URL or local document, and returns structured results. It is designed around the idea expressed in its own tagline, "You Only Scrape Once," meaning th…
read the full Scrapegraph-ai overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Scrapegraph-ai or katana more popular?
Scrapegraph-ai has 31,056 GitHub stars and katana has 17,518. Scrapegraph-ai has the larger community by that measure.
Are Scrapegraph-ai and katana free?
Both are open source. Scrapegraph-ai is licensed under MIT and katana under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Scrapegraph-ai and katana?
Scrapegraph-ai 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, Scrapegraph-ai or katana?
Choose Scrapegraph-ai if you want the larger community (31,056 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose katana if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.