head to head · open source
scrapy vs pydoll
scrapy has 65,180 GitHub stars, 12,093 forks, 394 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pydoll has 7,132 stars, 413 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped 25 days ago. scrapy leads on adoption by 814% (65,180 vs 7,132 stars). scrapy is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; pydoll is written in HTML under MIT. scrapy has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, pydoll 6%. scrapy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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.
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Side by side
| scrapy | pydoll | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 7.1K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Python | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 413 |
| 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 pydoll if
- You want the pydoll feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and pydoll 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 pydoll
The stealth first browser automation library for Python. No WebDriver, no navigator.webdriver flag, humanized clicks and typing. = 3.10" Documentation · Getting Started · Features · Support You have probably watched a scraper work on your machine, then hit a wall of captchas and Cloudflare challenges the moment it ran for real. That wall is what Pydoll is built around. It drives Chrome directly over the DevTools Protocol, so there is no WebDriver binary and no navigator.webdriver flag to give you away, and it clicks, types, and scrolls like a real person. That is often enough to get past the…
read the full pydoll overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is scrapy or pydoll more popular?
scrapy has 65,180 GitHub stars and pydoll has 7,132. scrapy has the larger community by that measure.
Are scrapy and pydoll free?
Both are open source. scrapy is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and pydoll under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between scrapy and pydoll?
scrapy is written in Python and pydoll in HTML. 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 pydoll?
Choose scrapy if you want the larger community (65,180 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose pydoll if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.