Heritrix vs StormCrawler

Struggling to choose between Heritrix and StormCrawler? Both products offer unique advantages, making it a tough decision.

Heritrix is a Development solution with tags like archiving, web-crawler, open-source.

It boasts features such as Crawls websites to archive web pages, Extensible and customizable architecture, Respects robots.txt and other exclusion rules, Handles large-scale web crawling, Supports distributed crawling across multiple machines, Recovers from crashes and network problems, Provides APIs and web interface for managing crawls and pros including Open source and free, High performance and scalability, Robust architecture and recovery features, Wide adoption for web archiving, Customizable to specific needs, APIs allow integration into workflows.

On the other hand, StormCrawler is a Development product tagged with crawler, scraper, storm, distributed, scalable.

Its standout features include Distributed web crawling, Fault tolerant, Horizontally scalable, Integrates with other Apache Storm components, Configurable politeness policies, Supports parsing and indexing, APIs for feed injection, and it shines with pros like Highly scalable, Resilient to failures, Easy integration with other data pipelines, Open source with active community.

Feature	Heritrix	StormCrawler
Overall Score	N/A	N/A
Primary Category	Development	Development

Product Overview

Heritrix

Description: Heritrix is an open-source, extensible, web-scale, archival-quality web crawler project built on the Apache stack. It is designed for archiving periodic captures of content from the web and large intranets.

StormCrawler

Description: StormCrawler is an open source web crawler designed to crawl large websites efficiently by scaling horizontally through Apache Storm. It is fault-tolerant and allows integration with other Storm components like machine learning pipelines.

Key Features Comparison

Heritrix Features

• Crawls websites to archive web pages
• Extensible and customizable architecture
• Respects robots.txt and other exclusion rules
• Handles large-scale web crawling
• Supports distributed crawling across multiple machines
• Recovers from crashes and network problems
• Provides APIs and web interface for managing crawls

StormCrawler Features

• Distributed web crawling
• Fault tolerant
• Horizontally scalable
• Integrates with other Apache Storm components
• Configurable politeness policies
• Supports parsing and indexing
• APIs for feed injection

Pros & Cons Analysis

Heritrix

Pros

• Open source and free
• High performance and scalability
• Robust architecture and recovery features
• Wide adoption for web archiving
• Customizable to specific needs
• APIs allow integration into workflows

Cons

• Complex installation and configuration
• Steep learning curve
• Requires expertise to customize and extend
• Not ideal for focused or targeted crawling
• No official technical support services

StormCrawler

Pros

• Highly scalable
• Resilient to failures
• Easy integration with other data pipelines
• Open source with active community

Cons

• Complex setup and configuration
• Requires running Apache Storm cluster
• No out-of-the-box UI for monitoring
• Limited documentation and examples

Pricing Comparison

Heritrix

• Open Source

StormCrawler

• Open Source