head to head · open source
katana vs xxl-crawler
katana has 17,794 GitHub stars, 1,215 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. xxl-crawler has 757 stars, 316 forks, 7 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. katana leads on adoption by 2,251% (17,794 vs 757 stars). katana is written in Go under MIT; xxl-crawler is written in Java under Apache-2.0. katana has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, xxl-crawler 42%. 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 | xxl-crawler | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 18K | ★ 757 |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-08-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 316 |
| 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 xxl-crawler if
- You want the xxl-crawler feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and xxl-crawler 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 xxl-crawler
XXL CRAWLER XXL CRAWLER, a lightweight web crawler framework. Home Page Introduction XXL CRAWLER is a lightweight web crawler framework. A line of code to develop a multi threaded crawler, fully annotated way to collect page data to Java objects, with "multi threaded, fully annotated, JS rendering, proxy, distributed extension" and other features; XXL CRAWLER 是一个轻量级Java爬虫框架。一行代码开发一个多线程爬虫，全注解方式采集页面数据至Java对象，拥有"多线程、全注解、JS渲染、代理、分布式扩展"等特性； Documentation 中文文档 Features 1、简洁：API直观简洁，可快速上手； 2、轻量级：底层实现仅强依赖jsoup，简洁高效； 3、模块化：模块化的结构设计，可轻松扩展； 4、全注解：支持通过注解提取页面数据，高效映射页面数据到PageVO对象，底层自动完成PageVO对象的数据抽取和封装返回；单个页面支持抽取一个或多个PageVO；…
read the full xxl-crawler overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is katana or xxl-crawler more popular?
katana has 17,794 GitHub stars and xxl-crawler has 757. katana has the larger community by that measure.
Are katana and xxl-crawler free?
Both are open source. katana is licensed under MIT and xxl-crawler under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between katana and xxl-crawler?
katana is written in Go and xxl-crawler in Java. 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 xxl-crawler?
Choose katana if you want the larger community (17,794 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose xxl-crawler if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.