head to head · open source
scrapy vs selenium
scrapy has 65,209 GitHub stars, 12,092 forks, 394 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. selenium has 34,583 stars, 8,726 forks, 188 open issues and last shipped yesterday. scrapy leads on adoption by 89% (65,209 vs 34,583 stars). scrapy is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; selenium is written in Java under Apache-2.0. scrapy has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, selenium 25%. selenium was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | selenium | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 35K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 8.7K |
| 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 selenium if
- You want the selenium 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 selenium 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 selenium
Selenium Automates browsers. That's it! Contributing • Installing • Building • Developing • Testing • Documenting • Releasing Selenium is an umbrella project encapsulating a variety of tools and libraries enabling web browser automation. Selenium specifically provides an infrastructure for the W3C WebDriver specification — a platform and language neutral coding interface compatible with all major web browsers. The project is made possible by volunteer contributors who've generously donated thousands of hours in code development and upkeep. This README is for developers interested in contributing to the project…
read the full selenium overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is scrapy or selenium more popular?
scrapy has 65,209 GitHub stars and selenium has 34,583. scrapy has the larger community by that measure.
Are scrapy and selenium free?
Both are open source. scrapy is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and selenium under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between scrapy and selenium?
scrapy is written in Python and selenium 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 selenium?
Choose scrapy if you want the larger community (65,209 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose selenium if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.