head to head · open source
PaddleOCR vs crewAI
PaddleOCR has 89,745 GitHub stars, 11,360 forks, 243 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. crewAI has 58,726 stars, 8,498 forks, 353 open issues and last shipped yesterday. PaddleOCR leads on adoption by 53% (89,745 vs 58,726 stars). PaddleOCR is written in Python under Apache-2.0; crewAI is written in Python under MIT. PaddleOCR has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, crewAI 14%. crewAI was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| PaddleOCR | crewAI | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 59K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 8.5K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick PaddleOCR if
- You weight community size — 90K 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 crewAI if
- You want the crewAI feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and crewAI fits your workflow better
About PaddleOCR
PaddleOCR is an Apache 2.0 Python OCR and document AI toolkit that converts PDFs and images into structured, LLM ready JSON or Markdown across more than 100 languages, and it is built for developers who need to feed documents into RAG pipelines, agents, and document parsing services.
read the full PaddleOCR overview →
About crewAI
CrewAI is an open source Python framework for orchestrating role playing, autonomous AI agents through collaborative Crews and event driven Flows, released under the MIT licence and built for developers and teams producing multi agent workflows in production.
read the full crewAI overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is PaddleOCR or crewAI more popular?
PaddleOCR has 89,745 GitHub stars and crewAI has 58,726. PaddleOCR has the larger community by that measure.
Are PaddleOCR and crewAI free?
Both are open source. PaddleOCR is licensed under Apache-2.0 and crewAI under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between PaddleOCR and crewAI?
PaddleOCR is written in Python and crewAI 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, PaddleOCR or crewAI?
Choose PaddleOCR if you want the larger community (89,745 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose crewAI if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.