Assembly Line

selectolax

Python binding to Modest and Lexbor engines. Fast HTML5 parser with CSS selectors for Python.

selectolax is an open-source libraries and runtimes project on GitHub under the MIT license (permissive), with 1.7k stars. It is built with CPython. Its last push was 4 days ago.

Stars
1.7k
License
MIT
Activity
Active
Latest release
v1.0.2

Code on GitHub Website

Replaces Beautiful Soup: why selectolax is the better choice, and when it is not.

Judgement

What it is
Building block
What it does
A fast Python HTML5 parser with CSS selectors, built in Cython on the Lexbor engine.
Adopt it when
You scrape or parse a lot of HTML in Python and BeautifulSoup is too slow.
Watch out
It has a smaller API than BeautifulSoup or lxml and no XPath support.
Ready for
Usable
Runs as
Library
Built with
Python, Cython and Lexbor
How established
Established: started 9 years ago, latest release v1.0.2.
What the license allows
You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.

Judged on 2026-11-06 from the project's README and GitHub data. The license and age lines are worked out directly.

Built from

CPython

Follow it down: selectolax → CPython → GCC → LLVM project → runs on a microchip

How compilers were built, back to punched paper tape

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Stars, license and activity come from GitHub and refresh on a rolling hourly schedule. The project's own description is quoted as written.