head to head · open source
scrapy vs fscrawler
scrapy has 64,394 GitHub stars, 11,964 forks, 394 open issues and last shipped yesterday. fscrawler has 1,452 stars, 307 forks, 87 open issues and last shipped today. scrapy leads on adoption by 4,335% (64,394 vs 1,452 stars). scrapy is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; fscrawler is written in Java under Apache-2.0. scrapy has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, fscrawler 21%. fscrawler 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 | fscrawler | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 64K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 307 |
| 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 fscrawler if
- You want the fscrawler 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 fscrawler 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 fscrawler
File System Crawler for Elasticsearch Welcome to FSCrawler for Elasticsearch This crawler helps to index binary documents such as PDF, Open Office, MS Office. Main features : Local file system (or a mounted drive) crawling and index new files, update existing ones and removes old ones. Remote file system over SSH/FTP crawling. REST interface to let you "upload" your binary documents to elasticsearch. Latest versions Current versions are: Quick start Run Elasticsearch with start local : Run FSCrawler with Docker: Then open Kibana and watch for your documents coming to the fscrawler alias: Or search for some text: …
read the full fscrawler overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is scrapy or fscrawler more popular?
scrapy has 64,394 GitHub stars and fscrawler has 1,452. scrapy has the larger community by that measure.
Are scrapy and fscrawler free?
Both are open source. scrapy is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and fscrawler under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between scrapy and fscrawler?
scrapy is written in Python and fscrawler 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 fscrawler?
Choose scrapy if you want the larger community (64,394 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose fscrawler if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.