head to head · open source
scrapy vs ArrowDL
scrapy has 64,394 GitHub stars, 11,964 forks, 394 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. ArrowDL has 851 stars, 41 forks, 7 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. scrapy leads on adoption by 7,467% (64,394 vs 851 stars). scrapy is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; ArrowDL is written in C++ under LGPL-3.0. scrapy has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, ArrowDL 5%. scrapy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (crawler), 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 | ArrowDL | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 64K | ★ 851 |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-05-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 41 |
| 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 ArrowDL if
- You want the ArrowDL feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and ArrowDL 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 ArrowDL
ArrowDL (Arrow Downloader) is a free, open source, standalone download manager for Windows, macOS and Linux, built in C++ with the Qt framework and aimed at anyone who needs to capture, queue and batch download files, media streams and torrents without depending on a browser's built in downloader.
read the full ArrowDL overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is scrapy or ArrowDL more popular?
scrapy has 64,394 GitHub stars and ArrowDL has 851. scrapy has the larger community by that measure.
Are scrapy and ArrowDL free?
Both are open source. scrapy is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and ArrowDL under LGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between scrapy and ArrowDL?
scrapy is written in Python and ArrowDL in C++. 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 ArrowDL?
Choose scrapy if you want the larger community (64,394 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose ArrowDL if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.