head to head · open source
Scrapegraph-ai vs crw
Scrapegraph-ai has 31,056 GitHub stars, 3,126 forks, 16 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. crw has 1,045 stars, 80 forks, 10 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Scrapegraph-ai leads on adoption by 2,872% (31,056 vs 1,045 stars). Scrapegraph-ai is written in Python under MIT; crw is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0. Scrapegraph-ai has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, crw 8%. crw was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 5 topic tags (crawler, data-extraction, firecrawl-alternative, llm), 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
| Scrapegraph-ai | crw | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 1.0K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-07 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 80 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Scrapegraph-ai if
- You weight community size — 31K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick crw if
- You want the crw feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and crw fits your workflow better
About Scrapegraph-ai
ScrapeGraphAI is an open source Python library for web scraping that combines large language models with direct graph logic to build scraping pipelines. It lives in the Python ecosystem and is distributed under the MIT license, with the reference package published on PyPI as scrapegraphai . Rather than requiring a developer to hand write selectors for every page, the library accepts a natural language prompt describing the information to extract, alongside a source URL or local document, and returns structured results. It is designed around the idea expressed in its own tagline, "You Only Scrape Once," meaning th…
read the full Scrapegraph-ai overview →
About crw
crw (fastCRW) is a Rust based web scraping, crawling, and search engine with an MCP server that turns URLs into clean markdown or structured JSON, aimed at AI agents and the developers who wire them into coding tools.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Scrapegraph-ai or crw more popular?
Scrapegraph-ai has 31,056 GitHub stars and crw has 1,045. Scrapegraph-ai has the larger community by that measure.
Are Scrapegraph-ai and crw free?
Both are open source. Scrapegraph-ai is licensed under MIT and crw under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Scrapegraph-ai and crw?
Scrapegraph-ai is written in Python and crw in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Scrapegraph-ai or crw?
Choose Scrapegraph-ai if you want the larger community (31,056 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose crw if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.