head to head · open source
scrapy vs Maxun
scrapy has 64,388 GitHub stars, 11,962 forks, 394 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Maxun has 17,485 stars, 1,509 forks, 105 open issues and last shipped yesterday. scrapy leads on adoption by 268% (64,388 vs 17,485 stars). scrapy is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; Maxun is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. scrapy has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, Maxun 9%. 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, crawling), 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 | Maxun | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 64K | ★ 17K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 1.5K |
| 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 Maxun if
- You want the Maxun feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Maxun 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 Maxun
Maxun is an open source no code web data platform for real time web scraping, crawling, search, and AI data extraction. It turns websites into structured data and presents robots that collect information without code. The TypeScript project is released under AGPL 3.0, with topics placing it in browser automation, Playwright, crawler, data extraction, and robotic process automation.
read the full Maxun overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is scrapy or Maxun more popular?
scrapy has 64,388 GitHub stars and Maxun has 17,485. scrapy has the larger community by that measure.
Are scrapy and Maxun free?
Both are open source. scrapy is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and Maxun under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between scrapy and Maxun?
scrapy is written in Python and Maxun 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 Maxun?
Choose scrapy if you want the larger community (64,388 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose Maxun if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.