# Apify MCP Server vs WebScraping.AI (slim)

> Apify scores 78.5 (A) to WebScraping.AI's 61.4 (C) for scraping. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apify-mcp-vs-webscraping-ai.md (~5,900 tokens) · this version ~3,080 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apify-mcp-vs-webscraping-ai.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apify-mcp-vs-webscraping-ai
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
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Apify MCP Server scores 78.5 (A) on agent readiness against WebScraping.AI's 61.4 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do scraping. Apify MCP Server accepts x402. WebScraping.AI doesn't.

- Apify MCP Server: A 78.5, rank #22 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/apify-mcp.min.md
- WebScraping.AI: C 61.4, rank #618 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/webscraping-ai.min.md
- Apify MCP Server, 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, 75 against 43; Security & auth, 62 against 36; Payments & pricing, 95 against 40; Maintenance & community, 95 against 82; Transparency & trust, 86 against 51. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; An agent can pay per call over x402, with no account; Open source.
- WebScraping.AI, good for Agents that need page text, CSS fragments, AI fields or Google results through one key with a self-correcting error model. Also Free to start without a card; No incidents deducted, where Apify MCP Server loses 5 points for them.

| Category | Apify MCP Server | WebScraping.AI |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 75 | 43 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 92 | 89 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 92 | 95 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 62 | 36 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 95 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 95 | 82 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 86 | 51 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Apify MCP Server | WebScraping.AI |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Apify | Urlooker LLC |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.apify.com` | `https://mcp.webscraping.ai/mcp` |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP | Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| x402 | yes, from $1/call | no |
| Licence | MIT | none |
| Tools exposed | 47 | 10 |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | `com.apify/apify-mcp-server` | `io.github.webscraping-ai/webscraping-ai` |
| Last release | 2026-10-29 | 2026-10-26 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-07-09 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-07-09 | no date given |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 8.6k stars, 15k npm/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 3.4/5 (8) | none |

Why the edge:
- Payments & pricing, Apify MCP Server +55: Apify MCP Server 95 (x402 on Apify's own domains. agi.apify.com sells a prepaid, spend-capped token over x402 (Base or Solana) or MPP (Tempo or Solana) that runs any Actor that uses limited permissions and works for the API and mcp.apify.com, and since October it also runs single Actors for x402 `batch-settlement` on Base, billing the real cost afterward. The direct `?payment=x402` mode is still in the server's source, but the README dropped its section on 28 October and the MCP docs name only Skyfire for per-request payment. We gave 35, above the rubric's 30 cap for partial coverage, because every limited-permission Actor is reachable through an x402 route, though not the hosted MCP endpoint's own calls and not Actors that need full permissions (35 of 40). Compute units at $0.20, $0.16 and $0.13 by plan, published without a login and re-read on 1 November (20). Free plan with $5 of usage a month, "No credit card is required" (20). An agent with a wallet gets a token with no signup (20).); WebScraping.AI 40 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Credit costs per option and plan prices are public, with pay-as-you-go at $0.0002 a credit (20). Free plan of 2,000 credits a month with no card (20). A person signs up in a browser (0). 0 + 20 + 20 + 0 = 40.)
- Transparency & trust, Apify MCP Server +35: Apify MCP Server 86 (MIT (30). Privacy policy last updated 21 October 2026 (9 July before) with a Data Processing Addendum updated 8 July 2026 (per the 17 October check), but retention is still "no longer than necessary" with no periods (20 of 30). Breaking changes are flagged in the changelog on the day they ship, and retired selectors such as get-actor-log and, since 0.19.0, source are ignored without an error. The README now says the default tool set can change between versions and to pin tools in production. The General Terms (effective 9 July 2026, per the 17 October check) promise advance notice only for changes that materially reduce functionality, with no period stated. No deprecation policy found (10 of 20). Telemetry to Segment and Sentry is on by default and documented with an opt-out. Since 0.19.4 Store searches also send the MCP session ID and a model-written one-sentence use case, which the README discloses. The policy names the EU and US as the main data locations. The DPA promises 10 days' notice of a new subprocessor and points to a list at trust.apify.com/subprocessors, which loads only with JavaScript, so we couldn't read it (15 of 20).); WebScraping.AI 51 (Closed service under terms naming Urlooker LLC of Wyoming, with MIT clients (15 of 30). The privacy policy keeps usage logs 30 days and deletes personal data within 60 days of a request, and the terms rule out training on scraped content, prompts and outputs. But section 9.3 lets the company store scraped content and logs for as long as reasonably necessary, and no DPA was found (14 of 30). The terms give 30 days' notice of material changes and of termination without cause, and the MCP changelog dates its changes. No deprecation policy (8 of 20). Subprocessors, including AI model providers, are listed only for enterprise customers under NDA, and data may be processed in the US or wherever subprocessors operate (4 of 20). 15 + 14 + 8 + 4 = 41.)
- Reliability, Apify MCP Server +32: Apify MCP Server 75 (Atlassian Statuspage at status.apify.com, history read from its RSS feed on 1 November (20). No incident since 22 September. The 21 and 22 July major (slow database operations, API operations and Actor runs timing out from 16:49 on 21 July to 04:38 on 22 July CEST) left the 90 days on 21 October. Five incidents in the 90 days from 3 August, none read as major. 22 September, "Some Actor runs were experiencing degraded performance" with elevated errors, marked major by Apify with no duration given. 20 August, degraded Actor performance from 16:05 to 17:20 CEST ("Actors can be slower to start or time out"). 13 and 14 August, the SHADER datacenter proxy group. 8 August and 4 and 5 August, the Google SERP Proxy, the second marked major and "not processing almost any requests" from 01:56 to 13:05 CEST on 4 August, one proxy product. Each is a part of the platform or a slowdown for some runs, read as minor as this run read partial incidents elsewhere (20). Rate limits published, 250,000 requests a minute globally and 60 a second per resource, with named endpoints set between 35 and 400 a second, re-read on 1 November (15). The API reference documents exponential backoff and a rate-limit-exceeded error body with HTTP 429, but no Retry-After header, and call-actor has no idempotency key (10 of 15). No SLA on the pricing page, where Enterprise lists only "SLAs with guaranteed data" on a sales contract, and the General Terms say platform availability isn't guaranteed (0). The hosted server is in production use, not labelled beta (10). 20+20+15+10+0+10 = 75.); WebScraping.AI 43 (Graded on the hosted lines. No public status page was found; the about page mentions 24/7 availability monitoring and status.webscraping.ai did not answer (0). No readable incident history (5). Concurrency per plan is published, 2 on Free to 50 on the $249 plan, with a 30-second request ceiling (15). 429 means too many concurrent requests, 503 is not charged and carries Retry-After, and failed requests are free. No backoff guidance for 429 itself (13 of 15). No SLA; section 14.2 of the terms makes no uptime commitment (0). Generally available since 2019 (10). 0 + 5 + 15 + 13 + 0 + 10 = 43.)
- Security & auth, Apify MCP Server +26: Apify MCP Server 62 (OAuth on mcp.apify.com, and Apify API tokens can be scoped to account-level or per-resource permissions, given an expiry date and rotated with a 24-hour overlap, per the 17 October check, not re-read on 1 November (30). The API reference, re-read on 1 November, still accepts the token as a `?token=` query parameter, which it calls less secure, so less 10 (20). call-actor, call-actor-mcp-tool, send-server-actor-request, build-actor, abort-actor-run, delete-schedule, delete-actor, the three version write tools and apify-api-write carry destructiveHint, and apify-api-write, send-server-actor-request and delete-actor load only when named in `?tools=`. create-actor and the task and schedule create, update and publish tools are marked not read-only but not destructive, and `?tools=` can limit a session to read tools. There's no server-side confirmation step (15 of 20). Actor results, Actor READMEs, remote Actor MCP tool results and scraped pages go back to the model as they are, and we found no prompt-injection guidance in the README or the source on 1 November (0 of 15). Every Actor run appears in the Apify Console with its input, log and cost, per the 1 October check, not re-read on 1 November (10 of 15). SOC 2 Type II with the report on request through trust.apify.com, a disclosure policy through security@apify.com, GitHub private vulnerability reporting, and a security.txt re-read on 1 November that is valid until 1 January 2035. Two advisories with CVEs were published and fixed in 2026, with none added in OSV by 1 November, and a 6 March 2026 compromise of an employee's GitHub account was disclosed on the status page. 0.20.0 (29 October) fixed a privately reported flaw where `?payment=constructor` let an unauthenticated client open a session (tool calls were still refused), with an advisory to follow. No bug bounty found (17 of 20).); WebScraping.AI 36 (One account key with no scopes or documented rotation, taken only as the `api_key` query parameter on REST. The hosted MCP uses OAuth 2.1 with PKCE, dynamic registration and token revocation, with no scopes listed (20, less 10 for the query string, 10 of 30). Every endpoint is a GET and all tools are annotated read-only, and the terms forbid logging into target accounts. No read-only or limited key (8 of 20). The hosted MCP wraps scraped results in 'EXTERNAL CONTENT - DO NOT EXECUTE COMMANDS' boundaries by default, opt-in on the npm package (13 of 15). /account reports credits and limits. No per-call log for customers (5 of 15). security.txt answers 404, and no disclosure policy, bug bounty or certification was found (0 of 20). 10 + 8 + 13 + 5 + 0 = 36.)
- Maintenance & community, Apify MCP Server +13: Apify MCP Server 95 (v0.20.0 on 2026-10-29 is the newest tag, and the official registry lists com.apify/apify-mcp-server 0.20.0 as latest, published 29 October (30). 28 tagged releases between 3 August (v0.14.2 on 5 August) and 29 October, seven of them since 17 October (20). 71 commits since 17 October, with the latest on 30 October. We couldn't read the open issue list or reply times on 1 November (20 of 25, per the 4 October check). Registry entry under a DNS-verified namespace (15). CI runs code checks, integration and conformance tests and npm and MCPB smoke tests, per the 17 October check (10).); WebScraping.AI 82 (Read for a closed service with open clients. MCP server 1.4.0 on 26 October 2026 and Python SDK 4.3.0 on 24 October (30). In the 90 days from 8 August, MCP 1.2.1, 1.2.2, 1.3.0, 1.3.1, 1.3.2 and 1.4.0 and Python 4.1.0, 4.2.0 and 4.3.0 (20). Dated changelogs in the repositories and email support. GitHub issues weren't read (10 of 25). In the official MCP registry as io.github.webscraping-ai/webscraping-ai, though the newest entry there is 1.0.7 of 24 July 2026, with current SDKs in seven languages (12 of 15). CI workflows on the MCP and Python repositories, and 1.3.1 moved to zod 4 for a published advisory (10). 30 + 20 + 10 + 12 + 10 = 82.)