head to head · open source
scrapy vs browser-search
scrapy has 64,394 GitHub stars, 11,964 forks, 394 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. browser-search has 524 stars, 39 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 17 days ago. scrapy leads on adoption by 12,189% (64,394 vs 524 stars). scrapy is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; browser-search is written in JavaScript under MIT. scrapy has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, browser-search 7%. scrapy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (scraping, web-scraping), 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 | browser-search | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 64K | ★ 524 |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Python | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 39 |
| 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 browser-search if
- You want the browser-search feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and browser-search 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 browser-search
browser search is an MIT licensed JavaScript skill for AI agents — OpenCode, Claude Code, Cursor, OpenClaw and others — that gives an agent a self hosted search, browse and anti bot bypass pipeline built on SearXNG, Camofox and CloakBrowser, aimed at developers who want live web answers without buying API keys or paying per query.
read the full browser-search overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is scrapy or browser-search more popular?
scrapy has 64,394 GitHub stars and browser-search has 524. scrapy has the larger community by that measure.
Are scrapy and browser-search free?
Both are open source. scrapy is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and browser-search under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between scrapy and browser-search?
scrapy is written in Python and browser-search in JavaScript. 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 browser-search?
Choose scrapy if you want the larger community (64,394 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose browser-search if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.