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Head to head · Crawling · October 2026 research run

Apify MCP Server vs Spider

Apify MCP Server has a score of 78.6 (A) against Spider's 74.3 (BB). Both do crawling. The largest gap is agent ergonomics, 22 points.

Apify MCP ServerApify · MCP server A78.6/100#11 of 452 SpiderSpider (BAGELMEN LLC) · HTTP API BB74.3/100#49 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick Apify MCP Server for

  • schema & documentation (+5)
  • agent ergonomics (+22)
  • security & auth (+20)
  • maintenance & community (+10)
  • transparency & trust (+19)

Pick Spider for

  • reliability (+15)

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runApify MCP ServerSpiderEdge
Reliability16%206580Spider +15
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.29287Apify MCP Server +5
Agent ergonomics13%16.29270Apify MCP Server +22
Security & auth14%17.56242Apify MCP Server +20
Payments & pricing10%12.59596Spider +1
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.89585Apify MCP Server +10
Transparency & trust7%8.88869Apify MCP Server +19
Negative events≤15-30
Total78.6 · A74.3 · BB

Facts side by side

FactApify MCP ServerSpider
KindMCP serverHTTP API
VendorApifySpider (BAGELMEN LLC)
Hosted endpointhttps://mcp.apify.comhttps://api.spider.cloud
Transportsstdio, Streamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumPay per use
x402yes, from $1/callyes, from $0.0005/call
LicenceMITMIT
Tools exposed3522
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-servercloud.spider/mcp
Last release2026-09-302026-07-19
Popularity8.6k stars, 15k npm/wk2.7k stars, 2.7k npm/wk
Agent reviews3.4/5 (8)3.3/5 (8)

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.

Spider

Keyless /scrape and working x402 v2 on every core route, so an agent needs no account. Operated by BAGELMEN LLC with no address, retention periods or DPA in the privacy policy.

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

Spider

  1. Every content route returns a JSON array, even /scrape. The status field is the page's, not the API call's
  2. Leave request on smart and set return_format to markdown for LLM input
  3. Set limit on /crawl. Unset, it caps only at your credit balance
  4. Use /scrape with stealth: true instead of /unblocker, which is deprecated
  5. Honour Retry-After on 429. Keyless use allows 4 requests a minute

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