head to head · open source
scrapy vs WebAI2API
scrapy has 64,394 GitHub stars, 11,964 forks, 394 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. WebAI2API has 1,353 stars, 352 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. scrapy leads on adoption by 4,659% (64,394 vs 1,353 stars). scrapy is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; WebAI2API is written in JavaScript under MIT. scrapy has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, WebAI2API 26%. 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.
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Side by side
| scrapy | WebAI2API | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 64K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Python | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-07-10 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 352 |
| 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 WebAI2API if
- You want the WebAI2API feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and WebAI2API 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 WebAI2API
WebAI2API is a Node.js service that turns browser based AI sites — LMArena, Google Gemini, ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Sora, Google Flow and others — into a single OpenAI compatible HTTP API by driving a real Camoufox (Playwright) browser, built for developers and small teams who want programmatic access to those web interfaces without official API keys.
read the full WebAI2API overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is scrapy or WebAI2API more popular?
scrapy has 64,394 GitHub stars and WebAI2API has 1,353. scrapy has the larger community by that measure.
Are scrapy and WebAI2API free?
Both are open source. scrapy is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and WebAI2API under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between scrapy and WebAI2API?
scrapy is written in Python and WebAI2API 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 WebAI2API?
Choose scrapy if you want the larger community (64,394 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose WebAI2API if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.