head to head · open source
colly vs puppeteer-sharp
colly has 25,527 GitHub stars, 1,862 forks, 195 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. puppeteer-sharp has 3,921 stars, 483 forks, 11 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. colly leads on adoption by 551% (25,527 vs 3,921 stars). colly is written in Go under Apache-2.0; puppeteer-sharp is written in C# under MIT. colly has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, puppeteer-sharp 12%. puppeteer-sharp 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 | puppeteer-sharp | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 3.9K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | C# |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 483 |
| 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 puppeteer-sharp if
- You want the puppeteer-sharp feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and puppeteer-sharp 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 puppeteer-sharp
Puppeteer Sharp is an MIT licensed .NET port of the official Node.js Puppeteer API, giving C developers headless Chrome automation for screenshots, PDF generation, content extraction, and end to end testing without leaving the .NET toolchain.
read the full puppeteer-sharp overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is colly or puppeteer-sharp more popular?
colly has 25,527 GitHub stars and puppeteer-sharp has 3,921. colly has the larger community by that measure.
Are colly and puppeteer-sharp free?
Both are open source. colly is licensed under Apache-2.0 and puppeteer-sharp under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between colly and puppeteer-sharp?
colly is written in Go and puppeteer-sharp in C#. 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 puppeteer-sharp?
Choose colly if you want the larger community (25,527 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose puppeteer-sharp if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.