# Crawl4AI vs vanilla-cookbook

> Two self-hosted projects, compared on the numbers selfhost.directory tracks live: score, popularity, release cadence and setup effort.

| | Crawl4AI | vanilla-cookbook |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 86/100 ✓ | 46/100 |
| Rank in category | #2 of 16 in Web Scraping | #13 of 18 in Recipe Management |
| GitHub stars | 86 515 ✓ | 158 |
| Stars, last 30 days | +2 295 ✓ | +0 |
| Stable releases, 12 months | 9 | 13 ✓ |
| Latest release | v0.9.5 · 14 Oct 2026 | v1.6.1 · 28 Oct 2026 ✓ |
| Setup | Moderate | Easy ✓ |
| Official Docker image | Yes | Yes |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Main language | Python | JavaScript |

## Which one should you pick?

Crawl4AI scores 86/100 against 46/100 for vanilla-cookbook, so it is the safer default.

vanilla-cookbook ships more often: 13 stable releases in the past year, against 9 for Crawl4AI.

If you want the quickest setup, vanilla-cookbook is easier to run; Crawl4AI needs more configuration.

Crawl4AI is growing faster right now (+2 295 stars in 30 days).

## Details

- [Crawl4AI](https://selfhost.directory/project/crawl4ai) (markdown: https://selfhost.directory/project/crawl4ai.md)
- [vanilla-cookbook](https://selfhost.directory/project/vanilla-cookbook) (markdown: https://selfhost.directory/project/vanilla-cookbook.md)

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Source: https://selfhost.directory/compare/crawl4ai-vs-vanilla-cookbook