head to head · open source
Crawl4AI vs Maxun
Crawl4AI has 86,783 GitHub stars, 9,043 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Maxun has 18,134 stars, 1,564 forks, 105 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. Crawl4AI leads on adoption by 379% (86,783 vs 18,134 stars). Crawl4AI is written in Python under Apache-2.0; Maxun is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. Crawl4AI has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, Maxun 9%. Crawl4AI was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (crawler, data-extraction, playwright), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Crawl4AI | Maxun | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 87K | ★ 18K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.0K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Crawl4AI if
- You weight community size — 87K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- 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 Crawl4AI
🚀🤖 Crawl4AI: Open source LLM Friendly Web Crawler & Scraper. 🚀 Crawl4AI Cloud API — Closed Beta (Launching Soon) Reliable, large scale web extraction, now built to be drastically more cost effective than any of the existing solutions. 👉 Apply here for early access We’ll be onboarding in phases and working closely with early users. Limited slots. Crawl4AI turns the web into clean, LLM ready Markdown for RAG, agents, and data pipelines. Fast, controllable, battle tested by a 50k+ star community. ✨ Check out latest update v0.9.3 ✨ New in v0.9.3 : Security release. Closes five coordinated disclosure advisories…
read the full Crawl4AI overview →
About Maxun
Maxun Turn Any Website Into A Structured API ✨ The unified open source no code platform for real time web scraping, crawling, search and AI data extraction ✨ Go To App • Documentation • Website • Discord • Watch Tutorials Sponsors Webshare Webshare gives you instant access to a proxy pool of 80M+ ethically sourced IPs across 195+ countries, with rotating residential, static ISP, and datacenter options plus a full API. It includes a 100+ Gbps backbone, country/city/state/ZIP/ASN level targeting, and requires no credit card to start. Free tier: 10 proxies + 1GB/month · Discount: MAXUN20 Get 20% off your first…
read the full Maxun overview →
More in Data & Analytics
Related comparisons
More Data Extraction & Web Scraping projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Data Extraction & Web Scraping field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Crawl4AI or Maxun more popular?
Crawl4AI has 86,783 GitHub stars and Maxun has 18,134. Crawl4AI has the larger community by that measure.
Are Crawl4AI and Maxun free?
Both are open source. Crawl4AI is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Maxun under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Crawl4AI and Maxun?
Crawl4AI is written in Python 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, Crawl4AI or Maxun?
Choose Crawl4AI if you want the larger community (86,783 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.