head to head · open source
scrapy vs icrawler
scrapy has 65,180 GitHub stars, 12,093 forks, 394 open issues and last shipped yesterday. icrawler has 934 stars, 181 forks, 31 open issues and last shipped 11 months ago. scrapy leads on adoption by 6,879% (65,180 vs 934 stars). scrapy is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; icrawler is written in Python under MIT. scrapy has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, icrawler 19%. scrapy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (crawler, python), 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 | icrawler | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 934 |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2025-12-10 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 181 |
| 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 icrawler if
- You want the icrawler feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and icrawler 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 icrawler
icrawler ======== .. image:: :target: :alt: PyPI Version .. image:: :target: :alt: Anaconda Version .. image:: :alt: Python Version .. image:: :alt: License Introduction Documentation: Try it with pip install icrawler or conda install c hellock icrawler . This package is a mini framework of web crawlers. With modularization design, it is easy to use and extend. It supports media data like images and videos very well, and can also be applied to texts and other type of files. Scrapy is heavy and powerful, while icrawler is tiny and flexible. With this package, you can write a multiple thread crawler easily by…
read the full icrawler overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is scrapy or icrawler more popular?
scrapy has 65,180 GitHub stars and icrawler has 934. scrapy has the larger community by that measure.
Are scrapy and icrawler free?
Both are open source. scrapy is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and icrawler under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between scrapy and icrawler?
scrapy is written in Python and icrawler 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 icrawler?
Choose scrapy if you want the larger community (65,180 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose icrawler if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.