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wtf is awesome-spider?

eternal-flame-ad/awesome-spider — explained in plain English

Analysis updated 2026-07-20 · repo last pushed 2018-07-27

Audience · dataComplexity · 1/5DormantSetup · easy

TL;DR

A curated directory of open-source web crawler projects, organized by target website. It's a catalog of links to tools that extract data from sites like Bilibili, Weibo, Instagram, and Reddit, mostly written in Python.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((repo))
    What it does
      Curated link directory
      Organized by site
      Mostly Python tools
    Target sites
      Chinese platforms
      International sites
      Niche data sources
    Use cases
      Market research
      Stock data analysis
      Job listing scraping
    Audience
      Data analysts
      Market researchers
      Job seekers
    Limitations
      No setup instructions
      No maintenance info
      Links only
    Tech stack
      Markdown
      GitHub README

Code map

Detail Auto

An interactive map of this repo's files and how they connect — its source is parsed live in your browser. Click Visualize to build it.

filefunction / class

Why would anyone build with this?

REASON 1

Find a ready-made crawler to pull product reviews from Chinese e-commerce sites like JD.com or Taobao.

REASON 2

Locate a tool to scrape stock market data from financial platforms like Xueqiu.

REASON 3

Discover a project to scrape job postings from sites like Lagou or 51job.

REASON 4

Find an existing scraper for social media platforms like Instagram, Reddit, or Weibo.

What's in the stack?

MarkdownPython

How it stacks up

eternal-flame-ad/awesome-spider0verflowme/alarm-clock0verflowme/seclists
LanguageCSS
Last pushed2018-07-272022-10-032020-05-03
MaintenanceDormantDormantDormant
Setup difficultyeasyeasyeasy
Complexity1/52/51/5
Audiencedatavibe coderops devops

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you spin it up?

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min

No setup needed, it's a list of links, you just browse the README and click through to individual projects.

No license information is provided for this repository, it is a curated list of links to other projects.

Wtf does this do

awesome-spider is a curated directory of web crawler projects, mostly written in Python. It's essentially a collection of links to various open-source tools that automatically extract data from websites, organized alphabetically by the target site or topic. Rather than being a tool you run yourself, it's more like a catalog or index pointing you to existing crawler projects built by different developers. The list covers a wide range of websites and data types. You'll find crawlers for major Chinese platforms like Bilibili, Weibo, Zhihu, DouBan, JD.com, Taobao, and NetEase Music, as well as international sites like Instagram, Reddit, StackOverflow, LinkedIn, and SoundCloud. There are also more specialized entries for things like flight prices, real estate listings on Lianjia, job postings, stock data, university course portals, and even shared bike availability. Some entries are for more niche or adult content sites. This would be useful for anyone who needs to gather data from the web but doesn't want to build a scraper from scratch. For example, a market researcher could find a tool to pull product reviews from JD.com, a data analyst could grab stock data from Xueqiu, or a job seeker could scrape listings from sites like Lagou or 51job. The directory gives you a starting point instead of having to search GitHub yourself for each site individually. The README doesn't go into detail about how each linked project works, what dependencies they require, or whether they're still maintained. It's simply a categorized list of links, with brief labels indicating the target site and sometimes the programming language used. You'd need to click through to each individual project to evaluate whether it suits your needs and is still functional.

Yoink these prompts

Prompt 1
I need to scrape product reviews from JD.com. Can you look at the awesome-spider directory on GitHub and help me pick the best crawler project for JD.com, then walk me through setting it up?
Prompt 2
I want to collect stock data from Xueqiu. Can you help me find a crawler in the awesome-spider list and write a script that fetches daily stock prices and saves them to a CSV file?
Prompt 3
I'm looking for a web crawler for Instagram or Reddit from the awesome-spider curated list. Can you help me evaluate which linked project is most actively maintained and easiest to use?
Prompt 4
Can you help me browse the awesome-spider repository and find crawlers for Chinese platforms like Bilibili, Weibo, or Zhihu, then set one up to scrape posts and comments?

Frequently asked questions

wtf is awesome-spider?

A curated directory of open-source web crawler projects, organized by target website. It's a catalog of links to tools that extract data from sites like Bilibili, Weibo, Instagram, and Reddit, mostly written in Python.

Is awesome-spider actively maintained?

Dormant — no commits in 2+ years (last push 2018-07-27).

What license does awesome-spider use?

No license information is provided for this repository, it is a curated list of links to other projects.

How hard is awesome-spider to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated easy, with roughly 5min to a first successful run.

Who is awesome-spider for?

Mainly data.

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