head to head · open source
lux vs toapi
lux has 31,821 GitHub stars, 3,331 forks, 545 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. toapi has 3,558 stars, 241 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. lux leads on adoption by 794% (31,821 vs 3,558 stars). lux is written in Go under MIT; toapi is written in Python under MIT. lux has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, toapi 7%. toapi 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 | toapi | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 3.6K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-03-29 | 2026-08-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.3K | ⑂ 241 |
| 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 toapi if
- You want the toapi feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and toapi 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 toapi
toapi Turn any website into a JSON API — declaratively. toapi lets you point at a web page, declare the fields you want with CSS selectors, and get back a clean JSON API. No crawler to babysit, no database to maintain — pages are fetched and parsed on demand, with built‑in caching. Install Requires Python 3.10+. Quickstart Run it: Then visit and you get: How it works 1. Route — @api.route("/posts", "/news") maps your API path to a source URL. 2. Fetch — pages are fetched with requests (or a headless browser if you pass browser= ) and cached in memory. 3. Parse — each Item extracts fields with CSS selectors via…
read the full toapi overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lux or toapi more popular?
lux has 31,821 GitHub stars and toapi has 3,558. lux has the larger community by that measure.
Are lux and toapi free?
Both are open source. lux is licensed under MIT and toapi under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lux and toapi?
lux is written in Go and toapi 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 toapi?
Choose lux if you want the larger community (31,821 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose toapi if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.