head to head · open source
colly vs Maxun
colly has 25,520 GitHub stars, 1,862 forks, 195 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Maxun has 17,485 stars, 1,509 forks, 105 open issues and last shipped yesterday. colly leads on adoption by 46% (25,520 vs 17,485 stars). colly is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Maxun is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. colly has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, Maxun 9%. Maxun was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (crawler, crawling), 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
| colly | Maxun | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 17K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 1.5K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick colly if
- You weight community size — 26K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Maxun if
- You want the Maxun feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Maxun fits your workflow better
About colly
Colly is an open source scraping and crawling framework written in Go, distributed under the Apache 2.0 license. It lives in the Go ecosystem and is consumed as a library rather than a standalone application: the README describes it as providing a clean interface for writing any kind of crawler, scraper, or spider, and the project's own topics list it as a crawler, crawling framework, scraper, scraping tool, and spider. The repository has been public for roughly nine years, carries 25,516 stars and 1,862 forks, and its most recent push was on 2 September 2026. Documentation and examples are hosted at go colly.org…
read the full colly overview →
About Maxun
Maxun is an open source no code web data platform for real time web scraping, crawling, search, and AI data extraction. It turns websites into structured data and presents robots that collect information without code. The TypeScript project is released under AGPL 3.0, with topics placing it in browser automation, Playwright, crawler, data extraction, and robotic process automation.
read the full Maxun overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is colly or Maxun more popular?
colly has 25,520 GitHub stars and Maxun has 17,485. colly has the larger community by that measure.
Are colly and Maxun free?
Both are open source. colly is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Maxun under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between colly and Maxun?
colly is written in Go and Maxun in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, colly or Maxun?
Choose colly if you want the larger community (25,520 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Maxun if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.