head to head · open source
scrapy vs x-reader
scrapy has 64,394 GitHub stars, 11,964 forks, 394 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. x-reader has 962 stars, 93 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 21 days ago. scrapy leads on adoption by 6,594% (64,394 vs 962 stars). scrapy is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; x-reader is written in Python under MIT. scrapy has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, x-reader 10%. scrapy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (python, 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 | x-reader | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 64K | ★ 962 |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 93 |
| 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 x-reader if
- You want the x-reader feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and x-reader 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 x-reader
x reader is an MIT licensed Python 3.10+ tool and MCP server that gives AI agents and developers one way to fetch, transcribe, and digest content from more than ten platforms — articles, videos, podcasts, and tweets — returning structured output instead of raw page markup.
read the full x-reader overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is scrapy or x-reader more popular?
scrapy has 64,394 GitHub stars and x-reader has 962. scrapy has the larger community by that measure.
Are scrapy and x-reader free?
Both are open source. scrapy is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and x-reader under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between scrapy and x-reader?
scrapy is written in Python and x-reader 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 x-reader?
Choose scrapy if you want the larger community (64,394 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose x-reader if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.