head to head · open source
scrapy vs ArchiveBox
scrapy has 64,428 GitHub stars, 11,967 forks, 394 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. ArchiveBox has 28,553 stars, 1,604 forks, 160 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. scrapy leads on adoption by 126% (64,428 vs 28,553 stars). scrapy is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; ArchiveBox is written in Python under MIT. scrapy has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, ArchiveBox 6%. ArchiveBox was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (python), 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
| scrapy | ArchiveBox | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 64K | ★ 29K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick scrapy if
- You weight community size — 64K 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 ArchiveBox if
- You want the ArchiveBox feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and ArchiveBox fits your workflow better
About scrapy
Scrapy is a web scraping framework written in Python, distributed under the BSD 3 Clause license, and described in its own README as a tool to extract structured data from websites. It is cross platform and requires Python 3.10 or newer. The project is maintained by Zyte, formerly known as Scrapinghub, together with a broader group of contributors, and it lives in the Python ecosystem as an installable library rather than a hosted service. Its repository is roughly seventeen years old, which places it among the longer running projects in the web scraping space.
read the full scrapy overview →
About ArchiveBox
ArchiveBox is an open source, self hosted web archiving application that lets individuals and organizations preserve public and private web content in durable, readable formats while keeping control of their own data.
read the full ArchiveBox overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is scrapy or ArchiveBox more popular?
scrapy has 64,428 GitHub stars and ArchiveBox has 28,553. scrapy has the larger community by that measure.
Are scrapy and ArchiveBox free?
Both are open source. scrapy is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and ArchiveBox under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between scrapy and ArchiveBox?
scrapy is written in Python and ArchiveBox in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, scrapy or ArchiveBox?
Choose scrapy if you want the larger community (64,428 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose ArchiveBox if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.