head to head · open source
lux vs PHPScraper
lux has 31,694 GitHub stars, 3,313 forks, 545 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. PHPScraper has 588 stars, 75 forks, 28 open issues and last shipped 12 days ago. lux leads on adoption by 5,290% (31,694 vs 588 stars). lux is written in Go under MIT; PHPScraper is written in PHP under GPL-3.0. lux has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, PHPScraper 13%. PHPScraper was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | PHPScraper | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 588 |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-03-29 | 2026-09-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.3K | ⑂ 75 |
| 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 PHPScraper if
- You want the PHPScraper feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and PHPScraper fits your workflow better
About lux
Lux is a video download library and command line tool written in Go, released under the MIT license. It ships as a single lux binary that takes one or more URLs and retrieves the underlying media streams, and it also exposes the downloading logic as a Go library that other programs can embed. The project has existed for roughly nine years and lives in the Go ecosystem, distributed through go install alongside the usual operating system package managers.
About PHPScraper
PHPScraper is a GPL 3.0 PHP web utility for developers who need to extract structured information such as titles, metadata, social tags, headings, lists, images, links, keywords, and downloadable assets from websites without writing selectors or manually preparing the extracted data.
read the full PHPScraper overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lux or PHPScraper more popular?
lux has 31,694 GitHub stars and PHPScraper has 588. lux has the larger community by that measure.
Are lux and PHPScraper free?
Both are open source. lux is licensed under MIT and PHPScraper under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lux and PHPScraper?
lux is written in Go and PHPScraper in PHP. 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 PHPScraper?
Choose lux if you want the larger community (31,694 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose PHPScraper if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.