head to head · open source
scrapy vs fess
scrapy has 65,180 GitHub stars, 12,093 forks, 394 open issues and last shipped yesterday. fess has 1,142 stars, 177 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped yesterday. scrapy leads on adoption by 5,608% (65,180 vs 1,142 stars). scrapy is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; fess is written in Java under Apache-2.0. scrapy has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, fess 15%. scrapy 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| scrapy | fess | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 177 |
| 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 fess if
- You want the fess feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and fess 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 fess
Fess: Enterprise Search Server Overview Fess is an enterprise search server that you can install and run on any platform with a Java runtime. It is built on OpenSearch, but prior OpenSearch knowledge is not required: Fess is configured through a browser based administration UI. A built in crawler collects documents from web sites, file systems, and data stores such as databases and CSV files. Many file formats are supported, including Microsoft Office, PDF, and ZIP archives. Fess Site Search is a free alternative to Google Site Search that you can embed in your own website. For details, see the FSS JS Generator…
More in Data & Analytics
Related comparisons
More Data Extraction & Web Scraping projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Data Extraction & Web Scraping field.
Frequently asked questions
Is scrapy or fess more popular?
scrapy has 65,180 GitHub stars and fess has 1,142. scrapy has the larger community by that measure.
Are scrapy and fess free?
Both are open source. scrapy is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and fess under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between scrapy and fess?
scrapy is written in Python and fess in Java. 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 fess?
Choose scrapy if you want the larger community (65,180 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose fess if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.