Maxun
Best for self-hosting
Why teams pick it
Control your scheduling stack on your own infrastructure.
Open-source alternatives to Crawlbase
Compare community-driven replacements for Crawlbase in web scraping & crawling workflows. We curate active, self-hostable options with transparent licensing so you can evaluate the right fit quickly.
Crawlbase
Crawlbase (formerly ProxyCrawl) offers Crawling API, large-scale Crawler, and Smart AI Proxy to scrape data anonymously and avoid blocks/CAPTCHAs, without running your own proxy infrastructure.Read more
Key stats
- 13Alternatives
- 1Support self-hosting
Run on infrastructure you control
- 12Active development
Recent commits in the last 6 months
- 11Permissive licenses
MIT, Apache, and similar licenses
Counts reflect projects currently indexed as alternatives to Crawlbase.
Start with these picks
These projects match the most common migration paths for teams replacing Crawlbase.
Firecrawl
Privacy-first alternative
Why teams pick it
Keep customer data in-house with privacy-focused tooling.
All open-source alternatives
Colly
Fast, elegant web scraping framework for Go developers
Active developmentPermissive licenseIntegration-friendlyGo
Why teams choose it
- Clean, declarative Go API
- High throughput (>1k requests/sec per core)
- Automatic cookie and session handling
Watch for
Requires familiarity with Go language
Migration highlight
Website content archiving
Capture and store static snapshots of target sites for preservation
ScrapeGraphAI
LLM‑powered web scraping pipelines in just five lines of code
Active developmentPermissive licenseIntegration-friendlyPython
Why teams choose it
- Prompt‑driven scraping pipelines requiring minimal code
- Multi‑page and parallel graph execution for higher throughput
- Supports major LLM providers and local Ollama models
Watch for
Requires LLM API keys or local model setup, adding cost or complexity
Migration highlight
Extract company profiles from competitor websites
Structured JSON containing description, founders, and social media links
Apache Nutch
Scalable, extensible Java web crawler for large‑scale data collection
Active developmentPermissive licenseIntegration-friendlyJava
Why teams choose it
- Plugin architecture for custom parsing, indexing, and fetching
- Native Hadoop integration for distributed crawling
- Configurable via nutch-site.xml with support for multiple protocols
Watch for
Steep learning curve for configuration and plugin development
Migration highlight
Academic web‑graph research
Generate a comprehensive link graph for citation analysis
Maxun
Train a web‑scraping robot in minutes, no code required
Self-host friendlyActive developmentPrivacy-firstTypeScript
Why teams choose it
- No‑code robot builder with visual workflow
- Built‑in handling of pagination, infinite scroll, and login
- Scheduled runs with automatic API or spreadsheet export
Watch for
Self‑hosting requires setting up multiple services (Postgres, MinIO, Redis, etc.)
Migration highlight
E‑commerce price monitoring
Generate daily price tables from competitor websites automatically
WebMagic
Scalable Java crawler framework with flexible API and annotations
Active developmentPermissive licenseFast to deployJava
Why teams choose it
- Simple core with high flexibility
- POJO annotation for configuration‑free crawlers
- Built‑in multi‑thread and distributed support
Watch for
Java‑only limits language choice
Migration highlight
GitHub repository metadata extraction
Collect author, repository name, and README content for analytics dashboards
Firecrawl
Turn any website into clean, LLM‑ready data instantly
Active developmentPrivacy-firstIntegration-friendlyTypeScript
Why teams choose it
- Multi‑format scraping (markdown, HTML, screenshots, structured data)
- Full‑site crawling with depth control and async batch jobs
- AI‑powered extraction and change tracking
Watch for
Self‑hosting still in development
Migration highlight
Chatbot with up‑to‑date website knowledge
Generates accurate answers using the latest site content fetched in markdown
Scrapy
Fast, high-level Python framework for web crawling and scraping
Active developmentPermissive licensePrivacy-firstPython
Why teams choose it
- Asynchronous request handling with Twisted
- Extensible middleware and item pipelines
- Built‑in selectors using XPath and CSS
Watch for
Steeper learning curve for beginners
Migration highlight
E‑commerce price monitoring
Automated daily extraction of product prices across competitor sites, feeding a pricing dashboard.
AutoScraper
Automatic, fast, lightweight web scraper that learns from examples
Permissive licenseIntegration-friendlyAI-powered workflowsPython
Why teams choose it
- Learn extraction rules from a few sample values
- Support both similar and exact result retrieval
- Save and load trained models for reuse
Watch for
Cannot scrape content rendered by JavaScript
Migration highlight
Gather related StackOverflow question titles
Generate a list of similar question titles from any StackOverflow page with a single function call.
AnyCrawl
High-performance web, site, and SERP crawler with AI extraction
Active developmentPermissive licenseFast to deployTypeScript
Why teams choose it
- Multi‑engine SERP crawling with Google support
- Threaded and process‑based crawling for bulk workloads
- LLM‑friendly JSON schema extraction
Watch for
SERP support limited to Google at present
Migration highlight
Generate LLM training data
Extract structured JSON from product pages to feed language models
Katana
Fast, configurable web crawler with headless and JavaScript support
Active developmentPermissive licenseFast to deployGo
Why teams choose it
- Standard and headless crawling modes
- JavaScript parsing and jsluice support
- Automatic form filling and extraction
Watch for
Requires Go 1.24+ for source installation
Migration highlight
Comprehensive site map generation for penetration testing
Produces a JSON list of all reachable URLs, paths, and resources across the target domain.
Scrapling
Adaptive web scraping that survives site changes effortlessly
Active developmentPermissive licenseIntegration-friendlyPython
Why teams choose it
- Adaptive selectors that auto‑relocate after site redesigns
- Stealthy and dynamic fetchers with headless browser support
- Async session management for concurrent high‑volume scraping
Watch for
Browser‑based fetchers add runtime dependencies
Migration highlight
E‑commerce price monitoring
Continues to collect product prices even after the retailer redesigns its layout, eliminating selector rewrites.
Crawlee
Build fast, human-like web scrapers with a single library
Active developmentPermissive licenseFast to deployTypeScript
Why teams choose it
- Single interface for HTTP and headless‑browser crawling
- Persistent URL queue with breadth‑first and depth‑first options
- Pluggable storage for datasets and file assets
Watch for
Requires Node.js 16+; adding Playwright increases install size
Migration highlight
E‑commerce price monitoring
Continuously extract product listings, prices, and availability, storing results in a dataset for price‑trend analysis.
LLM Scraper
Extract structured data from any webpage using LLMs
Active developmentPermissive licenseIntegration-friendlyTypeScript
Why teams choose it
- Multi‑model support: GPT, Sonnet, Gemini, Llama, Qwen, etc.
- Schema definition with Zod or JSON Schema and full TypeScript safety
- Playwright‑based page handling with HTML, raw HTML, markdown, text, and image modes
Watch for
Requires Playwright and a headless browser setup
Migration highlight
News aggregation
Extract top stories, scores, authors, and comment links from news sites into a structured JSON feed.
Choosing a web scraping & crawling alternative
Teams replacing Crawlbase in web scraping & crawling workflows typically weigh self-hosting needs, integration coverage, and licensing obligations.
- 1 project let you self-host and keep customer data on infrastructure you control.
- 12 options are actively maintained with recent commits.
Tip: shortlist one hosted and one self-hosted option so stakeholders can compare trade-offs before migrating away from Crawlbase.