head to head · open source
crawlee vs Skyvern
crawlee has 25,841 GitHub stars, 1,673 forks, 135 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Skyvern has 23,039 stars, 2,167 forks, 234 open issues and last shipped today. crawlee leads on adoption by 12% (25,841 vs 23,039 stars). crawlee is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; Skyvern is written in Python under AGPL-3.0. crawlee has attracted 6% 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 3 topic tags (automation, playwright, puppeteer), 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
| crawlee | Skyvern | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 23K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick crawlee if
- You weight community size — 26K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- 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 crawlee
Crawlee is a web scraping and browser automation library for Node.js, written in TypeScript and published on npm as the crawlee package. It lives in the JavaScript and TypeScript ecosystem, and it covers crawling and scraping end to end: fetching pages, following links, extracting data, and storing the results to disk or to the cloud. The project also has a Python counterpart, Crawlee for Python, maintained alongside it by Apify.
read the full crawlee 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 crawlee or Skyvern more popular?
crawlee has 25,841 GitHub stars and Skyvern has 23,039. crawlee has the larger community by that measure.
Are crawlee and Skyvern free?
Both are open source. crawlee is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Skyvern under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between crawlee and Skyvern?
crawlee is written in TypeScript 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, crawlee or Skyvern?
Choose crawlee if you want the larger community (25,841 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Skyvern if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.