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Open-source alternatives to Apify

Crawl4AI leads with 73, ahead of Firecrawl (67) and Jina Reader (46). Updated from public GitHub data.

The highest-scoring open-source projects in Data and scraping for AI. They are picks, not exact replacements, so read the weaknesses before you switch. The same picks fit if you are leaving ScrapingBee.

Most stars
Firecrawl 191,226 stars
Try before you install
Firecrawl live demo
Open-source alternatives to Apify
RankProjectScore
1Crawl4AIPython web crawler that converts pages to LLM-ready Markdown and JSONData and scraping for AI85.5k starsApache-2.073 out of 100
2FirecrawlWeb scraping and crawling API that returns LLM-ready markdown Live demo ↗ (opens in a new tab)Data and scraping for AI191.2k starsAGPL-3.067 out of 100
3Jina ReaderConverts any URL or search query into LLM-friendly markdown Live demo ↗ (opens in a new tab)Data and scraping for AI12.1k starsApache-2.046 out of 100

Reviews

173 out of 100

Crawl4AI

Python web crawler that converts pages to LLM-ready Markdown and JSON

85.5k starsApache-2.0last commit Oct 2026

Crawl4AI is a Python library, CLI (`crwl`) and Docker REST server that drives Playwright browsers (Chromium, Firefox, WebKit) to turn web pages into clean or filtered Markdown. It extracts structured data with CSS/XPath/regex schemas without an LLM, or through any LiteLLM-supported provider into a typed JSON schema. It also supports deep crawls, adaptive crawling and batch fetching. A hosted Crawl4AI Cloud with search and answer endpoints is sold separately.

Strengths

  • Schema-based CSS/XPath extraction runs without any LLM call
  • Fit Markdown filters (pruning, BM25, LLM) strip menus and boilerplate
  • Persistent profiles, CDP remote browsers, rotating proxies and stealth mode
  • Docker server exposes /md, /crawl, /screenshot, /pdf, plus MCP, dashboard and playground

Weaknesses

  • Search, SERP and answer endpoints exist only in the paid hosted cloud
  • Bot-wall handling when self-hosted depends on your own proxies and settings
  • Needs a Playwright browser install via crawl4ai-setup
  • README asks for attribution when you use it
  • no GPU
  • Docker + Compose
  • Needs Playwright browsers (Chromium), Docker (optional), LLM provider API key (optional)
  • Models: LiteLLM providers, OpenAI, Ollama
  • port 11235
Documentation ↗ (opens in a new tab)Website ↗ (opens in a new tab)Repository on GitHub ↗ (opens in a new tab)
267 out of 100

Firecrawl

Web scraping and crawling API that returns LLM-ready markdown

Live demo ↗ (opens in a new tab)191.2k starsAGPL-3.0last commit Oct 2026

API that turns URLs into markdown, HTML, screenshots or schema-based JSON, with endpoints for search, scrape, crawl, map, batch scrape, page interaction and a prompt-driven agent. Handles JS-rendered pages and parses hosted PDFs and DOCX. SDKs for Python, Node, Go, Java, Elixir, Rust and Ruby plus an MCP server and CLI, for teams feeding web content to RAG pipelines and agents.

Strengths

  • Seven SDKs plus CLI and MCP server; SDKs poll async crawl jobs automatically
  • Crawl, map and batch-scrape endpoints return job IDs for large sites
  • Scrape supports actions (click, scroll, write, wait) before extraction
  • Compose file at the repo root for self-hosting

Weaknesses

  • README is written around the hosted API and keys; self-hosting lives in separate docs
  • AGPL-3.0 license; network use of a modified version triggers source obligations
  • Agent endpoint runs the hosted spark-2 model, not a local LLM
  • Proxy rotation and anti-bot handling are hosted-service features
  • no GPU
  • Compose
Live demo ↗ (opens in a new tab)Documentation ↗ (opens in a new tab)Website ↗ (opens in a new tab)Repository on GitHub ↗ (opens in a new tab)
346 out of 100

Jina Reader

Converts any URL or search query into LLM-friendly markdown

Live demo ↗ (opens in a new tab)12.1k starsApache-2.0last commit May 2026

Open-source branch of the service behind r.jina.ai and s.jina.ai: fetches a page with headless Chrome or curl-impersonate, parses PDFs and Office files, and returns markdown, text, HTML, screenshots or JSON controlled by request headers (engine, timeout, token limits). The ghcr.io image bundles Chrome, LibreOffice and CJK fonts, serves HTTP/1.1 on 8081 and h2c on 8080, and runs stateless or with S3-compatible caching.

Strengths

  • Prebuilt image with Chrome, LibreOffice and CJK fonts; stateless by default
  • Fine-grained headers: x-respond-timing, x-max-tokens, x-token-budget, x-target-selector
  • Optional VLM captions for images without alt text
  • Semantic markdown chunking by heading or block level

Weaknesses

  • Hosted proxy pool, rate limiting and MongoDB storage layer are not in the OSS branch
  • Needs non-redistributable assets (MaxMind GeoLite2, Source Han Sans) fetched at build
  • Last commit May 2026; the SaaS resync was April 2026
  • Default h2c port 8080 needs --http2-prior-knowledge from curl; use 8081 otherwise
  • no GPU
  • Docker + Compose
  • Needs Headless Chrome and LibreOffice (bundled in image), S3-compatible bucket (optional cache), VLM endpoint for image captions (optional)
  • port 8081
Live demo ↗ (opens in a new tab)Documentation ↗ (opens in a new tab)Website ↗ (opens in a new tab)Repository on GitHub ↗ (opens in a new tab)