head to head · open source
scrapy vs pinchtab
scrapy has 65,180 GitHub stars, 12,093 forks, 394 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pinchtab has 10,539 stars, 789 forks, 4 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. scrapy leads on adoption by 518% (65,180 vs 10,539 stars). scrapy is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; pinchtab is written in Go under MIT. scrapy has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, pinchtab 7%. scrapy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (web-scraping), 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 | pinchtab | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 11K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 789 |
| 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 pinchtab if
- You want the pinchtab feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and pinchtab 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 pinchtab
PinchTab Browser control for AI agents Small Go binary • HTTP API • Token efficient What is PinchTab? PinchTab is a standalone HTTP server that gives AI agents direct control over Chrome. For day to day local use, the server is typically installed as a user level daemon, allowing agent tools to reuse the same browser control plane running in the background. This installs the control plane server and starts a default headless Chrome instance, ready to accept requests from agents or manual API calls. PinchTab is designed first for local, single user control on a machine you manage. Remote and distributed layouts…
read the full pinchtab overview →
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 pinchtab more popular?
scrapy has 65,180 GitHub stars and pinchtab has 10,539. scrapy has the larger community by that measure.
Are scrapy and pinchtab free?
Both are open source. scrapy is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and pinchtab under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between scrapy and pinchtab?
scrapy is written in Python and pinchtab in Go. 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 pinchtab?
Choose scrapy if you want the larger community (65,180 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose pinchtab if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.