head to head · open source
scrapy vs katana
scrapy has 65,180 GitHub stars, 12,093 forks, 394 open issues and last shipped yesterday. katana has 17,786 stars, 1,213 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped yesterday. scrapy leads on adoption by 266% (65,180 vs 17,786 stars). scrapy is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; katana is written in Go under MIT. scrapy has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, katana 7%. scrapy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (crawler, hacktoberfest), 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
| scrapy | katana | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 18K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick scrapy if
- You weight community size — 65K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause 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 scrapy
.. logo image:: :target: :alt: Scrapy :width: 480px .. version image:: :target: :alt: PyPI Version .. python version image:: :target: :alt: Supported Python Versions .. tests image:: :target: :alt: Tests .. coverage image:: :target: :alt: Coverage report .. conda image:: :target: :alt: Conda Version .. deepwiki image:: :target: :alt: Ask DeepWiki Scrapy is a web scraping framework to extract structured data from websites. It is cross platform, and requires Python 3.10+. It is maintained by Zyte (formerly Scrapinghub) and many other contributors . .. many other contributors: .. Scrapy: .. Zyte: Install with…
read the full scrapy overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is scrapy or katana more popular?
scrapy has 65,180 GitHub stars and katana has 17,786. scrapy has the larger community by that measure.
Are scrapy and katana free?
Both are open source. scrapy is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and katana under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between scrapy and katana?
scrapy 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, scrapy or katana?
Choose scrapy if you want the larger community (65,180 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose katana if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.