Crawlee is an open-source JavaScript and TypeScript library for building web crawlers and scraping tasks. It provides crawler classes, request handling, and a queue for URLs that a crawler still needs to process. The class you choose determines whether the task fetches HTML directly or uses a browser.
Choosing a Crawlee Crawler
CheerioCrawler makes HTTP requests and parses the returned HTML with Cheerio. It is a sensible starting point when the content is already in the response. If a page needs JavaScript to render the data or requires browser interaction, Crawlee also provides browser-based options such as PlaywrightCrawler and PuppeteerCrawler.
The request queue can start with a known list of URLs and grow as the crawler discovers links. A request handler then processes each response, extracts fields, and can add more requests. That is the useful distinction from a parser library alone: Crawlee can coordinate the crawl as well as parse pages.
What It Does Not Decide for You
You still need to define the fields to collect, validate the output, and choose limits that fit the target site. More workers or retries are not automatically better; they can increase load or lead to throttling. Follow the site’s access rules and use an approved API when one fits the task.
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