head to head · open source
lux vs crawly
lux has 31,835 GitHub stars, 3,332 forks, 545 open issues and last shipped 8 months ago. crawly has 1,129 stars, 125 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. lux leads on adoption by 2,720% (31,835 vs 1,129 stars). lux is written in Go under MIT; crawly is written in Elixir under Apache-2.0. lux has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, crawly 11%. crawly 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
| lux | crawly | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Elixir |
| Last push | 2026-03-29 | 2026-11-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.3K | ⑂ 125 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick lux if
- You weight community size — 32K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick crawly if
- You want the crawly feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Elixir
- You evaluated both and crawly fits your workflow better
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…
About crawly
Crawly Overview Crawly is an application framework for crawling web sites and extracting structured data which can be used for a wide range of useful applications, like data mining, information processing or historical archival. Requirements 1. Elixir 1.14 2. Works on GNU/Linux, Windows, macOS X, and BSD. Quickstart 0. Create a new project: mix new quickstart sup 1. Add Crawly as a dependencies: 2. Fetch dependencies: $ mix deps.get 3. Create a spider New in 0.15.0 : It's possible to use the command to speed up the spider creation, so you will have a generated file with all needed callbacks: mix…
read the full crawly overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lux or crawly more popular?
lux has 31,835 GitHub stars and crawly has 1,129. lux has the larger community by that measure.
Are lux and crawly free?
Both are open source. lux is licensed under MIT and crawly under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lux and crawly?
lux is written in Go and crawly in Elixir. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, lux or crawly?
Choose lux if you want the larger community (31,835 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose crawly if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.