head to head · open source
scrapy vs Skyvern
scrapy has 64,413 GitHub stars, 11,964 forks, 394 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Skyvern has 23,039 stars, 2,167 forks, 234 open issues and last shipped today. scrapy leads on adoption by 180% (64,413 vs 23,039 stars). scrapy is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; Skyvern is written in Python under AGPL-3.0. scrapy has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, Skyvern 9%. Skyvern 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 | Skyvern | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 64K | ★ 23K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick scrapy if
- You weight community size — 64K 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 Skyvern if
- You want the Skyvern feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and Skyvern fits your workflow better
About scrapy
Scrapy is a web scraping framework written in Python, distributed under the BSD 3 Clause license, and described in its own README as a tool to extract structured data from websites. It is cross platform and requires Python 3.10 or newer. The project is maintained by Zyte, formerly known as Scrapinghub, together with a broader group of contributors, and it lives in the Python ecosystem as an installable library rather than a hosted service. Its repository is roughly seventeen years old, which places it among the longer running projects in the web scraping space.
read the full scrapy overview →
About Skyvern
Skyvern is an open source Python project for automating browser based workflows with LLMs and computer vision. It lives in the browser automation and AI agent ecosystem, and it provides a Playwright compatible SDK that adds AI functionality on top of Playwright. The project also includes a no code workflow builder, so technical users can work through code while non technical users can define tasks through the interface.
read the full Skyvern overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is scrapy or Skyvern more popular?
scrapy has 64,413 GitHub stars and Skyvern has 23,039. scrapy has the larger community by that measure.
Are scrapy and Skyvern free?
Both are open source. scrapy is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and Skyvern under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between scrapy and Skyvern?
scrapy is written in Python and Skyvern in Python. 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 Skyvern?
Choose scrapy if you want the larger community (64,413 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose Skyvern if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.