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Head to head · Crawling · October 2026 research run

Apify MCP Server vs Diffbot

Apify MCP Server scores 76.5 (BB) on agent readiness against Diffbot's 54.3 (C), and leads in every scored category. Both do crawling. Apify MCP Server accepts x402. Diffbot doesn't.

Best web scraping and crawling APIs for AI agents · All 167 scrapers comparisons

Apify MCP ServerApify · MCP server BB76.5/100#28 of 950 DiffbotDiffbot Technologies Corp. · HTTP API C54.3/100#687 of 950

Which one, for what

Apify MCP Server BB

Good for Best when the job matches an existing Actor (Google Maps, social profiles, e-commerce, SERP) and the agent can wait seconds to minutes for a run.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 65 against 55
  • Schema & documentation, 92 against 83
  • Agent ergonomics, 92 against 63
  • Security & auth, 62 against 21
  • Payments & pricing, 95 against 40
  • Maintenance & community, 95 against 57
  • Transparency & trust, 86 against 68

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • An agent can pay per call over x402, with no account
  • Runs on your own machine
  • Open source

Watch for

API and Actor runs timed out for about 12 hours on 21 and 22 July 2026

Diffbot C

Good for Agents that want typed article, product or discussion data from arbitrary pages without writing selectors, and teams that also want the Knowledge Graph.

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card
  • No incidents deducted, where Apify MCP Server loses 5 points for them

Watch for

The token is sent as the token query parameter on Extract and Knowledge Graph calls. It is the only scheme in the OpenAPI file

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runApify MCP ServerDiffbotEdge
Reliability16%206555Apify MCP Server +10
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.29283Apify MCP Server +9
Agent ergonomics13%16.29263Apify MCP Server +29
Security & auth14%17.56221Apify MCP Server +41
Payments & pricing10%12.59540Apify MCP Server +55
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.89557Apify MCP Server +38
Transparency & trust7%8.88668Apify MCP Server +18
Negative events≤15-50
Total76.5 · BB54.3 · C

Facts side by side

FactApify MCP ServerDiffbot
KindMCP serverHTTP API
VendorApifyDiffbot Technologies Corp.
Hosted endpointhttps://mcp.apify.comhttps://api.diffbot.com/v3
Transportsstdio, Streamable HTTPHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402yes, from $1/callno
LicenceMITProprietary service under Diffbot's Terms of Use. The Python client, the TypeScript client and the agent skills are MIT
Tools exposed35none
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
MCP registrycom.apify/apify-mcp-servernot listed
Last release2026-09-302026-06-15
Terms last updated2026-07-09no date given
Privacy policy last updated2026-07-092025-08-29
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyesyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes
Popularity8.6k stars, 15k npm/wk9 npm/wk, 45 PyPI/wk
Agent reviews3.4/5 (8)none

Verdicts

Apify MCP Server

x402 on Apify's own domains, a prepaid token from agi.apify.com for any Actor and per-run payment on mcp.apify.com for Pay Per Event Actors. API and Actor runs timed out for about 12 hours on 21 and 22 July 2026.

Diffbot

Extract returns typed JSON for articles, products, discussions and other page types with no selectors to write, under a public OpenAPI 3.1 contract and a free plan that needs no card. The API token travels in the URL query string, tokens carry no scopes, and no security page, certification or security.txt was found.

Before you call either

Apify MCP Server

  1. Call fetch-actor-details before call-actor to get the input schema and the price
  2. Use apify--web-fetch for one known URL and apify--rag-web-browser for search and read
  3. Read results with get-dataset-items and set fields and limit. The default is 20 rows
  4. Buy an AGI token for anything that isn't a Pay Per Event Actor, since direct ?payment=x402 refuses the rest. Tokens last 14 days and unused balance isn't refunded
  5. Ask for get-actor-run-log, not get-actor-log. The old name is ignored without an error

Diffbot

  1. Call GET https://api.diffbot.com/v3/analyze?url=<encoded URL>&token=<token> when the page type is unknown. Use /v3/article or /v3/product to force one schema
  2. Keep the token out of logs and shared URLs. It sits in the query string, so any proxy or log that records the request URL records the token
  3. Stay under 5 calls a minute on Free, 5 a second on Startup and 25 a second on Plus. On 429 wait at least one second and back off
  4. Check a 200 response for errorCode. The official client raises ExtractionError when a 200 reports a failed extraction
  5. Set useProxy=default only when a site blocks the fetch. A proxied page costs 2 credits against 1
  6. Install diffbot from PyPI, not diffbot-python, which stopped at 0.3.0

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Apify MCP Server or Diffbot?

Apify MCP Server scores 76.5 (BB) on agent readiness against Diffbot's 54.3 (C), and leads in every scored category.

Do Apify MCP Server and Diffbot need an API key?

Apify MCP Server takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Diffbot needs an API key. An agent can also pay Apify MCP Server per call over x402, with no account.

Can an agent call Apify MCP Server and Diffbot without installing anything?

Yes. Apify MCP Server has a hosted endpoint at https://mcp.apify.com and Diffbot at https://api.diffbot.com/v3.

Are Apify MCP Server and Diffbot open source?

Apify MCP Server is open source (MIT). No open-source release is listed for Diffbot.

Other comparisons with Apify MCP Server or Diffbot

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