head to head · open source
scrapy vs crw
scrapy has 64,388 GitHub stars, 11,962 forks, 394 open issues and last shipped yesterday. crw has 1,045 stars, 80 forks, 10 open issues and last shipped yesterday. scrapy leads on adoption by 6,062% (64,388 vs 1,045 stars). scrapy is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; crw is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0. scrapy has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, crw 8%. crw 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 | crw | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 64K | ★ 1.0K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 80 |
| 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 crw if
- You want the crw feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and crw 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 crw
crw (fastCRW) is a Rust based web scraping, crawling, and search engine with an MCP server that turns URLs into clean markdown or structured JSON, aimed at AI agents and the developers who wire them into coding tools.
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Frequently asked questions
Is scrapy or crw more popular?
scrapy has 64,388 GitHub stars and crw has 1,045. scrapy has the larger community by that measure.
Are scrapy and crw free?
Both are open source. scrapy is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and crw under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between scrapy and crw?
scrapy is written in Python and crw in Rust. 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 crw?
Choose scrapy if you want the larger community (64,388 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose crw if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.