head to head · open source
Scrapling vs PDFLayoutTextStripper
Scrapling has 88,717 GitHub stars, 9,153 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped yesterday. PDFLayoutTextStripper has 1,610 stars, 213 forks, 25 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Scrapling leads on adoption by 5,410% (88,717 vs 1,610 stars). Scrapling is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; PDFLayoutTextStripper is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Scrapling has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, PDFLayoutTextStripper 13%. Scrapling was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (data-extraction), 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 | PDFLayoutTextStripper | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 89K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Java |
| Last push | 2026-10-19 | 2026-10-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.2K | ⑂ 213 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Scrapling if
- You weight community size — 89K 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 PDFLayoutTextStripper if
- You want the PDFLayoutTextStripper 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 PDFLayoutTextStripper 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 PDFLayoutTextStripper
PDFLayoutTextStripper Converts a PDF file into a text file while keeping the layout of the original PDF. Useful to extract the content from a table or a form in a PDF file. PDFLayoutTextStripper is a subclass of PDFTextStripper class (from the Apache PDFBox library). This repository is supported by our sponsor Spire.PDF for Java Create, edit, convert, and process PDF documents programmatically in Java, with support for tables, forms, images, annotations, and more. Explore Spire.PDF for Java → Use cases Data extraction from a table in a PDF file Data extraction from a form in a PDF file How to install Maven…
read the full PDFLayoutTextStripper overview →
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 PDFLayoutTextStripper more popular?
Scrapling has 88,717 GitHub stars and PDFLayoutTextStripper has 1,610. Scrapling has the larger community by that measure.
Are Scrapling and PDFLayoutTextStripper free?
Both are open source. Scrapling is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and PDFLayoutTextStripper under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Scrapling and PDFLayoutTextStripper?
Scrapling is written in Python and PDFLayoutTextStripper 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 PDFLayoutTextStripper?
Choose Scrapling if you want the larger community (88,717 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose PDFLayoutTextStripper if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.