head to head · open source
scrapy vs curl_cffi
scrapy has 65,180 GitHub stars, 12,093 forks, 394 open issues and last shipped yesterday. curl_cffi has 6,812 stars, 571 forks, 72 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. scrapy leads on adoption by 857% (65,180 vs 6,812 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 | ★ 65K | ★ 6.8K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 571 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick scrapy if
- You weight community size — 65K 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
.. logo image:: :target: :alt: Scrapy :width: 480px .. version image:: :target: :alt: PyPI Version .. python version image:: :target: :alt: Supported Python Versions .. tests image:: :target: :alt: Tests .. coverage image:: :target: :alt: Coverage report .. conda image:: :target: :alt: Conda Version .. deepwiki image:: :target: :alt: Ask DeepWiki Scrapy is a web scraping framework to extract structured data from websites. It is cross platform, and requires Python 3.10+. It is maintained by Zyte (formerly Scrapinghub) and many other contributors . .. many other contributors: .. Scrapy: .. Zyte: Install with…
read the full scrapy overview →
About curl_cffi
curl cffi Documentation Python binding for curl impersonate fork via cffi. For commercial support, visit impersonate.pro. curl cffi is the most popular Python binding for curl . Unlike other pure python http clients like httpx or requests , curl cffi can impersonate browsers' TLS/JA3 and HTTP/2 fingerprints. If you are blocked by some website for no obvious reason, you can give curl cffi a try. For JavaScript bindings, see impers, for solving JavaScript challenges, see brimp. Python 3.10 is the minimum supported version since v0.14. Recent highlights 🧭 Our new toy, brimp, a lightweight browser, works like curl…
read the full curl_cffi overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is scrapy or curl_cffi more popular?
scrapy has 65,180 GitHub stars and curl_cffi has 6,812. 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 (65,180 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.