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Head to head · Crawling · October 2026 research run

Apify MCP Server vs ScrapeGraphAI

Apify MCP Server has a score of 78.6 (A) against ScrapeGraphAI's 68.3 (B). Both do crawling. The largest gap is transparency & trust, 27 points. Apify MCP Server accepts x402. ScrapeGraphAI doesn't.

Apify MCP ServerApify · MCP server A78.6/100#11 of 452 ScrapeGraphAIScrapeGraphAI · HTTP API B68.3/100#128 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick Apify MCP Server for

  • agent ergonomics (+20)
  • security & auth (+23)
  • payments & pricing (+5)
  • maintenance & community (+25)
  • transparency & trust (+27)

Pick ScrapeGraphAI for

No category where it leads by five points or more.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runApify MCP ServerScrapeGraphAIEdge
Reliability16%206564Apify MCP Server +1
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.29288Apify MCP Server +4
Agent ergonomics13%16.29272Apify MCP Server +20
Security & auth14%17.56239Apify MCP Server +23
Payments & pricing10%12.59590Apify MCP Server +5
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.89570Apify MCP Server +25
Transparency & trust7%8.88861Apify MCP Server +27
Negative events≤15-30
Total78.6 · A68.3 · B

Facts side by side

FactApify MCP ServerScrapeGraphAI
KindMCP serverHTTP API
VendorApifyScrapeGraphAI
Hosted endpointhttps://mcp.apify.comhttps://v2-api.scrapegraphai.com
Transportsstdio, Streamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402yes, from $1/callpayer tooling only
LicenceMITnone
Tools exposed3520
Context cost (tools/list)n/an/a
p95 latencynot measured yetnot measured yet
Availability (30d)not measured yetnot measured yet
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
MCP registrycom.apify/apify-mcp-serverio.github.ScrapeGraphAI/scrapegraph-mcp
Last release2026-09-302026-07-31
Popularity8.6k stars, 15k npm/wk2.4k npm/wk, 46k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews3.4/5 (8)3/5 (2)

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.

ScrapeGraphAI

An agent can mint an account and key over x402 or MPP with no signup. Rate limits and plan prices differ between docs pages.

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. Direct ?payment=x402 refuses the rest
  5. Ask for get-actor-run-log, not get-actor-log. The old name is ignored without an error

ScrapeGraphAI

  1. Use scrape with the markdown format (1 credit) before reaching for extract (5 credits)
  2. Read GET https://v2-api.scrapegraphai.com/api/agent/protocols for current packs and prices before paying over x402
  3. MCP tool calls stop at 60 seconds. Use crawl_start and poll for anything longer
  4. Back off 1, 2 then 4 seconds on a 429 rate_limit_exceeded. No Retry-After is sent
  5. Use Orthogonal's x402 gateway when you need to pay per call without a key

Other comparisons with Apify MCP Server or ScrapeGraphAI

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