head to head · open source
Scrapling vs fess
Scrapling has 92,628 GitHub stars, 9,759 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped yesterday. fess has 1,142 stars, 177 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Scrapling leads on adoption by 8,011% (92,628 vs 1,142 stars). Scrapling is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; fess is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Scrapling has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, fess 15%. Scrapling was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (crawler, mcp), 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
| Scrapling | fess | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 93K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.8K | ⑂ 177 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Scrapling if
- You weight community size — 93K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause 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 Scrapling
Effortless Web Scraping for the Modern Web Selection methods · Fetchers · Spiders · Proxy Rotation · CLI · MCP Scrapling is an adaptive Web Scraping framework that handles everything from a single request to a full scale crawl. Its parser learns from website changes and automatically relocates your elements when pages update. Its fetchers bypass anti bot systems like Cloudflare Turnstile out of the box. And its spider framework lets you scale up to concurrent, multi session crawls with pause/resume, automatic proxy rotation, and a crawl speed that adapts to how fast each…
read the full Scrapling overview →
About fess
Fess: Enterprise Search Server Overview Fess is an enterprise search server that you can install and run on any platform with a Java runtime. It is built on OpenSearch, but prior OpenSearch knowledge is not required: Fess is configured through a browser based administration UI. A built in crawler collects documents from web sites, file systems, and data stores such as databases and CSV files. Many file formats are supported, including Microsoft Office, PDF, and ZIP archives. Fess Site Search is a free alternative to Google Site Search that you can embed in your own website. For details, see the FSS JS Generator…
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 Scrapling or fess more popular?
Scrapling has 92,628 GitHub stars and fess has 1,142. Scrapling has the larger community by that measure.
Are Scrapling and fess free?
Both are open source. Scrapling is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and fess under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Scrapling and fess?
Scrapling 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, Scrapling or fess?
Choose Scrapling if you want the larger community (92,628 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose fess if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.