head to head · open source
scrapy vs PDFLayoutTextStripper
scrapy has 64,907 GitHub stars, 12,022 forks, 394 open issues and last shipped yesterday. PDFLayoutTextStripper has 1,610 stars, 213 forks, 25 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. scrapy leads on adoption by 3,931% (64,907 vs 1,610 stars). scrapy is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; PDFLayoutTextStripper is written in Java under Apache-2.0. scrapy has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, PDFLayoutTextStripper 13%. scrapy 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 | PDFLayoutTextStripper | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Java |
| Last push | 2026-10-19 | 2026-10-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 213 |
| 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 PDFLayoutTextStripper if
- You want the PDFLayoutTextStripper 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 PDFLayoutTextStripper 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 PDFLayoutTextStripper
PDFLayoutTextStripper Converts a PDF file into a text file while keeping the layout of the original PDF. Useful to extract the content from a table or a form in a PDF file. PDFLayoutTextStripper is a subclass of PDFTextStripper class (from the Apache PDFBox library). This repository is supported by our sponsor Spire.PDF for Java Create, edit, convert, and process PDF documents programmatically in Java, with support for tables, forms, images, annotations, and more. Explore Spire.PDF for Java → Use cases Data extraction from a table in a PDF file Data extraction from a form in a PDF file How to install Maven…
read the full PDFLayoutTextStripper overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is scrapy or PDFLayoutTextStripper more popular?
scrapy has 64,907 GitHub stars and PDFLayoutTextStripper has 1,610. scrapy has the larger community by that measure.
Are scrapy and PDFLayoutTextStripper free?
Both are open source. scrapy is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and PDFLayoutTextStripper under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between scrapy and PDFLayoutTextStripper?
scrapy is written in Python and PDFLayoutTextStripper 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 PDFLayoutTextStripper?
Choose scrapy if you want the larger community (64,907 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose PDFLayoutTextStripper if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.