Awesome Web Crawlers

Explore this curated list of most popular web crawlers to extract data from the web for many programming languages. You'll find web crawling tools for different needs. Last update: September 2025.

By language

• Python
• JavaScript
• Java
• PHP
• Golang
• C#
• Ruby
• Rust
• Perl
• Scala
• R
• Erlang
• C++
• C

Featured Web Crawlers

• Bright Data - Most popular web crawler API, especially useful to avoid blocks.
• scrapy - Fast and scalable library for Python with a huge ecosystem.
• Puppeteer - Headless Chrome automation for JavaScript, great for crawling dynamic pages.

Python

Takeaway: Scrapy remains the go-to for async and distributed crawling. MechanicalSoup is a good fit for simple form automation. Newspaper3k is suitable for news and article crawling. For lighter stacks, you-get handles media downloads, while httpx and selectolax give you fast building blocks for custom crawlers.

Tool	Parsing	JS Rendering	Headless Browser	Async	Distributed
Scrapy	✅	✅ (ext)	✅ (ext)	✅	✅ (ext)
MechanicalSoup	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
you-get	❌ (media DL, not HTML)	❌	❌	❌	❌
newspaper3k	✅	❌	❌	✅ (threaded)	❌
httpx	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌
selectolax	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌

Recommended

• Scrapy — Fast high-level web crawling and scraping framework.
  • Scrapyd — Deploy and schedule Scrapy spiders.
  • Scrapy-Redis — Redis-backed queues.
• MechanicalSoup — Automate HTML form navigation (Requests + BeautifulSoup; no JS).
• you-get — CLI downloader for media pages (YouTube, etc.); not a general crawler.
• newspaper3k — News/article extraction (title, text, images, keywords).
• httpx — Async HTTP client with HTTP/2 support (modern replacement for Requests).
• selectolax — Fast HTML parser (libxml2-backed) for crawling pipelines.

No longer maintained

• pyspider — Powerful but now-archived web crawling and task scheduling framework with a web UI.
• django-dynamic-scraper — Scraper framework built on Django, designed for content aggregation projects.
• scrapy-cluster — Distributed scraping architecture built on Scrapy, Kafka, and Redis.
• distribute_crawler — Simple distributed crawler built on Python, Redis, and MongoDB.
• cola — General-purpose distributed crawling framework (Python 2.7 era).
• Demiurge — Lightweight crawling library with CSS selectors, inspired by Scrapy but simpler.
• crawley — Early Python crawling framework; aimed to combine scraping and ORM-like data persistence.
• RoboBrowser — Library for navigating websites with BeautifulSoup + Requests, without requiring a browser.
• PSpider — Educational/simple Python crawler framework; demonstrates common crawling patterns.
• aspider — Asynchronous (asyncio-based) crawler, similar to aiohttp + Scrapy mix.
• Portia — Visual scraping tool from Scrapinghub; lets you build spiders by pointing and clicking.
• Scrapely — HTML content extraction library (template-based).
• CoCrawler — Concurrent crawling engine (check org repos for active tools).
• brownant — Lightweight framework for web data extraction.
• MSpider — Simple gevent-based spider with JS render support.
• sukhoi — Minimalist and fast web crawler.
• spidy — Simple command-line crawler for quick site walks.
• Ruia — Async scraping framework (middlewares, pipelines, asyncio-native).

JavaScript

Takeaway: Puppeteer and Playwright are the most common options when you need full JS rendering and browser automation. Cheerio is great for fast static HTML parsing. Axios or node-fetch provide solid async HTTP backbones for building lightweight crawlers.

Tool	Parsing	JS Rendering	Headless Browser	Async	Distributed
Puppeteer	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌
Playwright	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌
Cheerio	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌
Axios	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌
node-fetch	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌
node-crawler	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌

Recommended

• Puppeteer — Official Chrome/Chromium headless browser automation library.
• Playwright — Cross-browser automation (Chromium, Firefox, WebKit).
• Cheerio — Fast jQuery-like parser for static HTML.
• Axios — Popular HTTP client (Promise-based).
• node-fetch — Lightweight Fetch API implementation for Node.js.
• node-crawler — Early async crawler framework (callback-based).

No longer maintained

• Simplecrawler — Once-popular general purpose crawler, now inactive.
• x-ray — Elegant scraping API built on Cheerio, now inactive.

Java

Takeaway: Apache Nutch remains the go-to for large-scale, distributed crawling. StormCrawler is powerful for real-time, streaming-based crawling. WebMagic provides a flexible, developer-friendly framework. For lighter setups, Crawler4j is a classic choice for simple async crawling.

Tool	Parsing	JS Rendering	Headless Browser	Async	Distributed
Apache Nutch	✅	❌	❌	✅	✅
StormCrawler	✅	❌	❌	✅	✅
WebMagic	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌
Crawler4j	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌
Heritrix	✅	❌	❌	✅	✅

Recommended

• Apache Nutch — Large-scale, distributed crawler built on Hadoop.
• StormCrawler — Real-time, distributed web crawler built on Apache Storm.
• WebMagic — Flexible, modular web scraping framework for Java.
• Crawler4j — Simple, popular open-source crawler for Java.
• Heritrix — Internet Archive’s archival-quality web crawler.

PHP

Takeaway: PHP crawling is less common than in Python or Java, but there are still solid open-source options. Goutte is widely used for HTML scraping with a jQuery-like API. PHP-Crawler and CrawlerDetect offer simple crawling and detection utilities. spatie/crawler is a modern, maintained package that integrates well with Laravel.

Tool	Parsing	JS Rendering	Headless Browser	Async	Distributed
Goutte	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
spatie/crawler	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
PHP-Crawler	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
CrawlerDetect	❌ (bot detection only)	❌	❌	❌	❌

Recommended

• Goutte — Popular PHP web scraping library (uses Symfony DomCrawler + Guzzle).
• spatie/crawler — Modern, Laravel-friendly web crawler built on Guzzle and Symfony components.
• PHP-Crawler — General-purpose PHP spider/crawler.

Golang

Takeaway: Go’s concurrency model makes it a strong fit for building crawlers. Colly is the most popular framework, offering a clean API with async support. gocrawl and crawley provide flexible crawling foundations. headless-chrome bindings allow you to integrate JS rendering when needed.

Tool	Parsing	JS Rendering	Headless Browser	Async	Distributed
Colly	✅	❌	❌	✅ (goroutines)	❌
gocrawl	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌
crawley	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌
headless-chrome	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌
ferret	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌

Recommended

• Colly — Popular and actively maintained Go crawling framework with simple API.
• gocrawl — Polite, extensible crawler built in Go.
• crawley — Go library for building simple crawlers and scrapers.
• chromedp — Headless Chrome/Chromium control for Go; enables JS rendering.
• ferret — Declarative web scraping language/runtime in Go, with headless browser support.

C#

Takeaway: Abot2 is the most popular and actively maintained. DotnetSpider is a flexible option with async/distributed support. AngleSharp is widely used for parsing (often combined with HTTP clients). Selenium or Playwright bindings cover headless browser automation.

Tool	Parsing	JS Rendering	Headless Browser	Async	Distributed
Abot2	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌
DotnetSpider	✅	❌	❌	✅	✅
AngleSharp	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌
Playwright for .NET	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌
Selenium WebDriver	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌

Recommended

• Abot2 — Lightweight, extensible web crawler for .NET Core/Framework.
• DotnetSpider — High-level crawling framework with async/distributed features.
• AngleSharp — HTML5 parser and CSS selector engine for .NET.
• Playwright for .NET — Browser automation for Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit.
• Selenium WebDriver — Cross-language browser automation; mature and widely used.

Ruby

Takeaway: Ruby’s ecosystem leans heavily on Nokogiri for parsing, but there are a few solid crawling libraries. Anemone and Spidr are the classic general-purpose crawlers. Mechanize is popular for automating form submissions and link following. For JS-heavy sites, Ruby relies on Selenium or Playwright bindings.

Tool	Parsing	JS Rendering	Headless Browser	Async	Distributed
Anemone	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
Spidr	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
Mechanize	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
Ferrum	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌
Capybara	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌
Watir	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌

Recommended

• Anemone — Simple, extensible web crawler for Ruby.
• Spidr — Flexible Ruby library for spidering websites.
• Mechanize — Automates website interaction (forms, links, sessions).
• Ferrum — Headless Chrome driver for Ruby.
• Capybara — Acceptance test framework with crawling/automation capabilities.
• Watir — Ruby browser automation library built on Selenium/WebDriver.

Rust

Takeaway: reqwest and surf provide async HTTP backbones, while select.rs and scraper handle parsing. fantoccini and thirtyfour enable browser automation for JS-heavy sites. Dedicated crawling frameworks like crawly are emerging, but most work is still done with building blocks.

Tool	Parsing	JS Rendering	Headless Browser	Async	Distributed
reqwest	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌
surf	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌
scraper	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
select.rs	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
fantoccini	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌
thirtyfour	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌
crawly	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌

Recommended

• reqwest — Popular async HTTP client, great for building custom crawlers.
• scraper — CSS selector-based HTML parser for Rust.
• fantoccini — High-level WebDriver client for controlling browsers.
• thirtyfour — Selenium/WebDriver automation library for Rust.
• crawly — Early Rust crawling framework built on async foundations.

Perl

Takeaway: Perl’s crawling ecosystem is older but still functional. WWW::Mechanize is the classic choice for automating browsing and scraping. Mojo::UserAgent (part of Mojolicious) provides async HTTP requests and is often used as a crawler base. Web::Scraper offers CSS selector-style scraping. For JS-heavy sites, Perl relies on Selenium bindings.

Tool	Parsing	JS Rendering	Headless Browser	Async	Distributed
WWW::Mechanize	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
Mojo::UserAgent	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌
Web::Scraper	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
Selenium::Remote::Driver	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌

Recommended

• WWW::Mechanize — Classic Perl module for automating web interactions and scraping.
• Mojo::UserAgent — Async HTTP client in Mojolicious, useful as a crawler foundation.
• Web::Scraper — Simple CSS selector-based scraping library for Perl.
• Selenium::Remote::Driver — Selenium WebDriver bindings for Perl, enables browser automation.

Scala

Takeaway: WebSpider and scala-crawler exist as lightweight libraries, while Sparkling and Scalding are used when integrating crawling with big data processing. For heavy-duty crawling, Scala projects often rely directly on Java tools like Nutch or StormCrawler.

Tool	Parsing	JS Rendering	Headless Browser	Async	Distributed
scala-crawler	✅	❌	❌	✅ (Akka)	❌
web-spider	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌
crawler4j (via Java interop)	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌
StormCrawler (via Java interop)	✅	❌	❌	✅	✅
Apache Nutch (via Java interop)	✅	❌	❌	✅	✅

Recommended

• scala-crawler — Scala DSL for writing crawlers on top of Akka actors.
• web-spider — Simple crawler written in Scala.
• crawler4j — Popular Java crawler, usable in Scala via JVM interop.
• StormCrawler — Real-time distributed crawler on Apache Storm (Scala-friendly).
• Apache Nutch — Large-scale distributed crawler on Hadoop (usable from Scala).
• scala-scraper — Great for HTML scraping, but not a full crawler.

R

Takeaway: R is not commonly used for large-scale crawling, but it has several packages for scraping and lightweight crawling. rvest is the most popular for HTML scraping, while Rcrawler provides a more complete crawling framework. For HTTP requests, httr2 and curl are the go-to packages. For JS-heavy sites, R typically delegates to Selenium or RSelenium.

Tool	Parsing	JS Rendering	Headless Browser	Async	Distributed
Rcrawler	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
rvest	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
httr2	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌
curl	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌
RSelenium	✅	✅	✅ (via Selenium)	❌	❌

Recommended

• Rcrawler — Web crawler and scraper for R, supports data collection and storage.
• rvest — Tidyverse package for scraping HTML using CSS selectors/XPath.
• httr2 — Modern HTTP client for R, useful for building custom crawlers.
• RSelenium — R bindings to Selenium WebDriver for browser automation.

Erlang

Takeaway: Crawly is the most notable, offering a Scrapy-like framework in Erlang. Other efforts are experimental or niche. For JS rendering or browser automation, Erlang typically defers to external tools through ports or Elixir bindings.

Tool	Parsing	JS Rendering	Headless Browser	Async	Distributed
Crawly	✅	❌	❌	✅	✅
Spider	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌
Hackney	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌

Recommended

• Crawly — Erlang crawling framework inspired by Scrapy; supports async and distributed crawling.
• Spider — Early Erlang crawler for simple spidering tasks.
• Hackney — HTTP client for Erlang, often used as a foundation for crawlers.

C++

Takeaway: C++ isn’t a mainstream language for high-level web crawling, but its performance makes it useful in low-level or custom crawling systems. Libraries like Heritrix are Java-based, so in C++ you mostly find lighter frameworks, HTML parsers, or bindings to browser engines. Some older projects exist, but many are inactive.

Tool	Parsing	JS Rendering	Headless Browser	Async	Distributed
StormCrawler++	✅	❌	❌	✅	✅
C++ Requests (cpr)	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌
QtWebKit / QtWebEngine	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌
Casablanca (cpprestsdk)	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌

Recommended

• StormCrawler++ — C++ implementation of crawler components for distributed systems.
• cpr — C++ Requests: simple HTTP client, often used to build crawlers.
• QtWebEngine — Chromium-based engine for headless browsing in C++.
• cpprestsdk — Microsoft’s REST SDK for HTTP and JSON; good for building crawler backbones.

C

Takeaway: Crawlers in C typically rely on libraries like libcurl for HTTP and libxml2 for parsing. There are a few simple open-source crawler projects, but most large-scale crawling is delegated to higher-level languages.

Tool	Parsing	JS Rendering	Headless Browser	Async	Distributed
libcurl	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌
libxml2	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
Heritrix C port (experimental)	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
SimpleCrawler-C	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌

Recommended

• libcurl — Core C library for HTTP(S), FTP, and other protocols, often the base for crawlers.
• libxml2 — XML/HTML parser library, used for content extraction.
• SimpleCrawler-C — Minimal educational web crawler in C.

🤖 For LLM / AI / RAG

Focused on clean text extraction and browser automation for feeding RAG pipelines:

• Scrapy (Python).
• MechanicalSoup (Python).
• Playwright (JavaScript).
• chromedp (Golang).
• DotnetSpider (C#).

🛒 For E-Commerce

Optimized for product pages, price monitoring, and large catalogs:

• Scrapy (Python).
• Cheerio (JavaScript / Node.js).
• Colly (Golang).
• Abot2 (C#).
• spatie/crawler (PHP).

⚡ For Dynamic Content

Handles SPAs and JS-heavy sites with headless browser automation:

• Scrapy + Playwright (Python).
• Puppeteer (JavaScript / Node.js).
• chromedp (Golang).
• Ferrum (Ruby).
• thirtyfour (Rust).

🔍 SEO Crawling

Built for audits, link checks, and technical SEO signals:

• Scrapy (Python).
• node-crawler (JavaScript / Node.js).
• Goutte (PHP).
• Rcrawler (R).
• Crawly (Erlang).

📚 Articles

• Bright Data vs Oxylabs: Scraping APIs — In-depth comparison of two major crawling APIs.