head to head · open source
scrapy vs curl_cffi
scrapy has 64,388 GitHub stars, 11,962 forks, 394 open issues and last shipped yesterday. curl_cffi has 6,507 stars, 552 forks, 72 open issues and last shipped yesterday. scrapy leads on adoption by 890% (64,388 vs 6,507 stars). scrapy is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; curl_cffi is written in Python under MIT. scrapy has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, curl_cffi 8%. scrapy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | curl_cffi | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 64K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 552 |
| 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 curl_cffi if
- You want the curl_cffi feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and curl_cffi 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 curl_cffi
curl cffi is a Python HTTP client that binds the curl impersonate fork through cffi so Python programs can impersonate browser TLS/JA3 and HTTP/2 fingerprints, and it is aimed at developers whose scripts are blocked by bot protection despite apparently correct requests.
read the full curl_cffi overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is scrapy or curl_cffi more popular?
scrapy has 64,388 GitHub stars and curl_cffi has 6,507. scrapy has the larger community by that measure.
Are scrapy and curl_cffi free?
Both are open source. scrapy is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and curl_cffi under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between scrapy and curl_cffi?
scrapy is written in Python and curl_cffi 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 curl_cffi?
Choose scrapy if you want the larger community (64,388 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose curl_cffi if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.