head to head · open source
stagehand vs ferret
stagehand has 24,565 GitHub stars, 1,698 forks, 376 open issues and last shipped today. ferret has 6,013 stars, 324 forks, 12 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. stagehand leads on adoption by 309% (24,565 vs 6,013 stars). stagehand is written in TypeScript under MIT; ferret is written in Go under Apache-2.0. stagehand has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, ferret 5%. stagehand was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (browser-automation, data-extraction), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| stagehand | ferret | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 25K | ★ 6.0K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 324 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick stagehand if
- You weight community size — 25K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick ferret if
- You want the ferret feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and ferret fits your workflow better
About stagehand
Stagehand is the MIT licensed SDK for extracting data and interacting with any site on the web, available in TypeScript, Python, and Go, and aimed at developers building AI agents that need to drive a browser the way a person does rather than at engineers writing test suites.
read the full stagehand overview →
About ferret
Ferret is a declarative data automation language and embeddable Go runtime for structured extraction workflows, built for Go developers who need to query, transform, and synchronize structured data across browsers, APIs, databases, and documents from inside their own applications.
read the full ferret overview →
More in Data & Analytics
Related comparisons
More Data Extraction & Web Scraping projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Data Extraction & Web Scraping field.
Frequently asked questions
Is stagehand or ferret more popular?
stagehand has 24,565 GitHub stars and ferret has 6,013. stagehand has the larger community by that measure.
Are stagehand and ferret free?
Both are open source. stagehand is licensed under MIT and ferret under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between stagehand and ferret?
stagehand is written in TypeScript and ferret in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, stagehand or ferret?
Choose stagehand if you want the larger community (24,565 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose ferret if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.