head to head · open source
lux vs grab
lux has 31,825 GitHub stars, 3,330 forks, 545 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. grab has 2,462 stars, 271 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 1.1 years ago. lux leads on adoption by 1,193% (31,825 vs 2,462 stars). lux is written in Go under MIT; grab is written in Python under MIT. lux has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, grab 11%. lux 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
| lux | grab | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 2.5K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-03-29 | 2025-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.3K | ⑂ 271 |
| 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 grab if
- You want the grab feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and grab 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 grab
Grab Update (2025 year) Since 2018 (which is the year of most recent Grab release) I have tried to do large refactoring of code base of Grab library. Which ended up with semi working product which nobody uses, including me. I have decided to reset all project files to the state of most recent pypi release 0.6.41 dated by june 2018. At least, now the code base corresponds to live version of the product which is being used by some people, according to pypi stats. I've updated Grab code base and code base of its dependencies to be compatible with Python 2.7 and Python 3.13 (and, hopefully, all py versions between…
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Frequently asked questions
Is lux or grab more popular?
lux has 31,825 GitHub stars and grab has 2,462. lux has the larger community by that measure.
Are lux and grab free?
Both are open source. lux is licensed under MIT and grab under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lux and grab?
lux is written in Go and grab in Python. 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 grab?
Choose lux if you want the larger community (31,825 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose grab if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.