head to head · open source
Scrapegraph-ai vs fess
Scrapegraph-ai has 31,140 GitHub stars, 3,141 forks, 16 open issues and last shipped 13 days ago. fess has 1,137 stars, 175 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped today. Scrapegraph-ai leads on adoption by 2,639% (31,140 vs 1,137 stars). Scrapegraph-ai is written in Python under MIT; fess is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Scrapegraph-ai has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, fess 15%. fess was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (ai-search, crawler, 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 | fess | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-07 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 175 |
| 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 fess if
- You want the fess feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and fess 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 fess
Fess is an open source, self hosted enterprise and site search server built on OpenSearch, intended for teams and site owners who need to crawl, index, and search their own web, file, database, and cloud content without sending it to a hosted search provider.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Scrapegraph-ai or fess more popular?
Scrapegraph-ai has 31,140 GitHub stars and fess has 1,137. Scrapegraph-ai has the larger community by that measure.
Are Scrapegraph-ai and fess free?
Both are open source. Scrapegraph-ai is licensed under MIT and fess under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Scrapegraph-ai and fess?
Scrapegraph-ai is written in Python and fess in Java. 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 fess?
Choose Scrapegraph-ai if you want the larger community (31,140 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose fess if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.