head to head · open source
scrapy vs single-file-cli
scrapy has 65,180 GitHub stars, 12,093 forks, 394 open issues and last shipped yesterday. single-file-cli has 1,679 stars, 147 forks, 49 open issues and last shipped yesterday. scrapy leads on adoption by 3,782% (65,180 vs 1,679 stars). scrapy is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; single-file-cli is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0. scrapy has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, single-file-cli 9%. scrapy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (crawler), 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 | single-file-cli | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 1.7K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 147 |
| 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 single-file-cli if
- You want the single-file-cli feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and single-file-cli 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 single-file-cli
SingleFile CLI (Command Line Interface) Introduction SingleFile can be launched from the command line by running it into a (headless) browser. It runs through Deno as a standalone script injected into the web page via the Chrome DevTools Protocol, or via WebDriver BiDi when using Firefox, instead of being embedded into a WebExtension. Installation SingleFile can be run without installing it, just download the executable file and save it in the directory of your choice here: Make sure Chrome or a Chromium based browser is installed in the default folder. Otherwise you might need to set the browser executable path…
read the full single-file-cli overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is scrapy or single-file-cli more popular?
scrapy has 65,180 GitHub stars and single-file-cli has 1,679. scrapy has the larger community by that measure.
Are scrapy and single-file-cli free?
Both are open source. scrapy is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and single-file-cli under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between scrapy and single-file-cli?
scrapy is written in Python and single-file-cli in JavaScript. 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 single-file-cli?
Choose scrapy if you want the larger community (65,180 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose single-file-cli if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.