head to head · open source
scrapy vs dots
scrapy has 64,647 GitHub stars, 11,989 forks, 394 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dots has 31,817 stars, 4,695 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped today. scrapy leads on adoption by 103% (64,647 vs 31,817 stars). scrapy is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; dots is written in TypeScript under MIT. scrapy has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, dots 15%. dots 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 | dots | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 32K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-07 | 2026-10-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 4.7K |
| 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 dots if
- You want the dots feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and dots 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 dots
dots is an open source AI web agent that ships with its own anti detect Firefox browser, aimed at developers and automation engineers who need an agent to browse, log in and click through real websites without being blocked.
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Frequently asked questions
Is scrapy or dots more popular?
scrapy has 64,647 GitHub stars and dots has 31,817. scrapy has the larger community by that measure.
Are scrapy and dots free?
Both are open source. scrapy is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and dots under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between scrapy and dots?
scrapy is written in Python and dots in TypeScript. 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 dots?
Choose scrapy if you want the larger community (64,647 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose dots if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.