head to head · open source
Crawl4AI vs lux
Crawl4AI has 86,783 GitHub stars, 9,043 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lux has 31,818 stars, 3,329 forks, 545 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. Crawl4AI leads on adoption by 173% (86,783 vs 31,818 stars). Crawl4AI is written in Python under Apache-2.0; lux is written in Go under MIT. Crawl4AI has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, lux 10%. Crawl4AI was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (crawler, scraper), 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
| Crawl4AI | lux | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 87K | ★ 32K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-03-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.0K | ⑂ 3.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Crawl4AI if
- You weight community size — 87K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick lux if
- You want the lux feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and lux fits your workflow better
About Crawl4AI
🚀🤖 Crawl4AI: Open source LLM Friendly Web Crawler & Scraper. 🚀 Crawl4AI Cloud API — Closed Beta (Launching Soon) Reliable, large scale web extraction, now built to be drastically more cost effective than any of the existing solutions. 👉 Apply here for early access We’ll be onboarding in phases and working closely with early users. Limited slots. Crawl4AI turns the web into clean, LLM ready Markdown for RAG, agents, and data pipelines. Fast, controllable, battle tested by a 50k+ star community. ✨ Check out latest update v0.9.3 ✨ New in v0.9.3 : Security release. Closes five coordinated disclosure advisories…
read the full Crawl4AI overview →
About lux
Lux Let there be Lux! 👾 Lux is a fast and simple video downloader built with Go. Installation Prerequisites Install via go install Homebrew (macOS only) Arch Linux Void Linux Scoop on Windows Chocolatey on Windows Cask on Windows/macOS/Linux Getting Started Download a video Download anything else Download playlist Multiple inputs Resume a download Auto retry Cookies Proxy Multi Thread Short link bilibili Use specified Referrer Specify the output path and name Debug Mode Reuse extracted data Options Download: Network: Playlist: Filesystem: Subtitle: Youku: aria2: Supported Sites Known issues 优酷 西瓜/头条视频…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Crawl4AI or lux more popular?
Crawl4AI has 86,783 GitHub stars and lux has 31,818. Crawl4AI has the larger community by that measure.
Are Crawl4AI and lux free?
Both are open source. Crawl4AI is licensed under Apache-2.0 and lux under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Crawl4AI and lux?
Crawl4AI is written in Python and lux 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, Crawl4AI or lux?
Choose Crawl4AI if you want the larger community (86,783 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose lux if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.