# Bright Data vs Qovia > Qovia scores 61.2 (C) to Bright Data's 60 (C) for web search. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side. - Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-qovia - Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-qovia.md (~5,850 tokens) - Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt) - API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json - MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key) - DNS: dig +short TXT .grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.. and .vs.. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev) - Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data) - Updated: 2026-11-01 Qovia scores 61.2 (C) on agent readiness against Bright Data's 60 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Bright Data leads on agent ergonomics, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do web search. - Bright Data: grade C, 60/100, rank #622 of 1253. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/bright-data.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/bright-data.json - Qovia: grade C, 61.2/100, rank #558 of 1253. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/qovia.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/qovia.json - Best web scraping and crawling APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/web-scrapers/index.md - All 261 scrapers comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/web-scrapers/index.md ## Which one, for what ### Bright Data (C) Good for: Hard targets and site-specific structured data (Amazon, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google Maps) at volume. Ahead on: - Agent ergonomics, 82 against 77 - Maintenance & community, 84 against 77 - Transparency & trust, 61 against 30 Also in its favour: - Free to start without a card Watch for: No public status page or incident history ### Qovia (C) Good for: Agents that need structured public data from Chinese platforms (Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Weibo, Bilibili, Kuaishou, Zhihu, WeChat official accounts, Taobao and JD reviews) or the Xingtu and Pugongying creator marketplaces, with TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, X and Reddit beside them, paid per successful call from a prepaid balance. Ahead on: - Reliability, 40 against 35 - Schema & documentation, 86 against 74 - Payments & pricing, 55 against 40 Watch for: No status page, incident history or SLA; the terms promise nothing about uptime and the Python client is the only retry guidance beyond `Retry-After` ## Why the edge ### Transparency & trust: Bright Data +31 - Bright Data (61): The API is closed under the Bright Data licence, and the MCP server is MIT, so we gave 20 between the closed and open bands (20 of 30). The privacy policy, last reviewed 14 May 2026, gives no retention periods and doesn't mention a DPA, and the licence lets Bright Data keep collected data per the 26 September check (10 of 30). Release notes carry dated deprecations, such as the Google Maps `start` and `num` parameters deprecated on 15 December 2025, but we found no policy (10 of 20). No subprocessor list. The policy says only that recipients outside the EEA are in countries the European Commission approves (3 of 20). - Qovia (30): Closed service. The Terms of Service is one paragraph that names no legal entity, address or liability terms, says Delaware law governs and that the page is a summary with the signed agreement governing; the repository's client is MIT. Between the closed and unclear bands (7 of 30). The privacy policy is one paragraph. Account information is used to deliver and bill, personal information is not sold, requests and results are not resold, deletion requests go to the support mailbox, and the agreement governs where it differs. No retention periods, no subprocessors, no DPA, and no statement about the cache the prov.source flag implies; the SECURITY.md repeats the same points (8 of 30). A 410 endpoint_disabled code exists for retired endpoints and the changelog is dated, but there is no deprecation policy or notice period and nothing is marked deprecated (5 of 20). Stripe is named on the pricing page as the card and Alipay processor; no other provider, data location or transfer basis is stated (3 of 20). 7+8+5+3 = 23. ### Payments & pricing: Qovia +15 - Bright Data (40): No x402, MPP or L402. Issue #126 asks for x402 and is open (0). Web Unlocker and SERP at $1.50 per 1,000 successful requests, $1.30 on Scale, published without a login (20). 5,000 requests a month, 'No credit card required' (20). A person has to sign up and create a key in the control panel (0). - Qovia (55): No x402, MPP or L402 on Qovia's own endpoints; USDT on TRC-20 is a top-up method from a console session, not a machine payment protocol. The vendor's five Actors on the Apify Store under the profile qovia (Qovia Data, the same Telegram handle and mailbox as the site), such as the Xingtu Actor at $0.01 to $0.06 a section, can be paid through Apify, whose prepaid token is sold over x402, so partial credit for a third-party route on part of the catalogue (10 of 40). Per-call prices are published without a login, per endpoint in the OpenAPI file, llms.txt and the docs, search at $5 and raw endpoints from $0.5 to $19.5 per 1,000, with the tier rule and payment fees stated (20). 50 trial calls for a new account, counted only when a call returns data; the quickstart says to top up when they run out and the docs ask for no card at sign-up, though no account was created to confirm it (20). A person signs up in a browser and creates a key; the MCP catalogue tools work without a key but data calls do not, and the Apify route reaches four platforms without a Qovia account (5 of 20). 10+20+20+5 = 55. ### Schema & documentation: Qovia +12 - Bright Data (74): No OpenAPI file found for the API. The MCP server has zod schemas on every tool, so partial credit (15 of 25). llms.txt at docs.brightdata.com with Markdown pages (10). MCP descriptions say what each tool returns, and the dataset tools say when to use them instead of the one-record web_data_* tools (14 of 20). Typed inputs with enums such as engine google, bing or yandex (12 of 15). Per-product error catalogues for Web Unlocker, Browser API and scrapers, and curl examples (13 of 15). Release notes, last entry 14 June 2026, and an MCP CHANGELOG with a gap between 2.6.0 and 2.10.0 (10 of 15). - Qovia (86): An OpenAPI 3.1.0 file (version 0.1.0, 1 MB) is public at qovia.ai/openapi.json with 144 paths and 144 operations, two security schemes, typed query parameters, a response example on every operation and the error responses declared on each. The data payload itself is typed only as object, array or null with per-endpoint examples, and the MCP call_endpoint tool takes a free params object, so 22 of 25 (22). llms.txt (75 KB, one line per endpoint with price and status) and llms-full.txt (331 KB, the whole documentation as text) are served, and the quickstart's billing, limits and error sections are in both (10). Every operation has a summary and a description; most say what the data holds, how to page, which ids to pass, which fields are unavailable and what answers 404 or empty, and the MCP server's instructions say to find, read then call. Guidance on when not to use an endpoint is thin, mostly pointers such as replies coming from another endpoint (16 of 20). 321 parameters, 75 with enums, patterns on ids, min and max on strings and integers, 117 operations with one required parameter and 16 with none, the POST body typed with additionalProperties false, and unknown parameters rejected with 400 (14 of 15). A response example on all 144 operations, 20 error codes with every message variant listed, response headers documented per error, and cURL, Python, JavaScript and raw HTTP samples; the examples are catalogue samples the docs say are not live data (14 of 15). Paths are under /v1, a 410 endpoint_disabled code exists for retired endpoints, and the changelog is dated, but it has two days (21 and 22 October 2026), nothing is marked deprecated and no notice period is stated (10 of 15). 22+10+16+14+14+10 = 86. ### Maintenance & community: Bright Data +7 - Bright Data (84): MCP v2.11.3 on 2026-09-15 (30). v2.11.1 on 27 July, v2.11.2 on 11 September and v2.11.3 on 15 September (20). 13 open issues on the MCP repository, including 502s under load (#104, January 2026) and a JSON parse error (#74, October 2025) still open. We couldn't see reply dates (12 of 25). io.github.brightdata/brightdata-mcp in the official registry under a GitHub-verified namespace, but the registry entry is at 2.9.4 against 2.11.3 on npm (12 of 15). Tests run in CI on every push to main (10). - Qovia (77): The newest changes are the registry entry ai.qovia/qovia 0.1.1 and the repository's tools snapshot and plugin manifests on 28 October 2026, after the Python client 0.1.1 on PyPI on 27 October; the repository was pushed on 1 November (30). Eight changelog entries on 21 and 22 October, two registry versions (22 and 28 October) and two PyPI releases (25 and 27 October) are more than three dated entries in 90 days, all within ten days (20). Closed service with a public changelog. Support is Telegram, WhatsApp, WeChat and one mailbox, with a one-business-day reply promised for email; GitHub issues are enabled on the repository with none opened, and no forum, Discord or community was found (7 of 15). ai.qovia/qovia is in the official MCP registry under a DNS-verified reverse-DNS namespace at 0.1.1, marked latest, and the Python client is an official package on PyPI (15). The client is standard-library Python with a test file, MIT, no dependencies and no CI workflow in the repository tree; the account's other nine repositories are forks of lists and directories (5 of 10). 30+20+7+15+5 = 77. ### Reliability: Qovia +5 - Bright Data (35): No public status page found. status.brightdata.com doesn't resolve and the docs index and security overview link none (0). No readable incident history, so 5 by the rubric (5). Paid plans state unlimited concurrency and the free tier 5,000 requests a month, but we found no per-second limits for the API (10 of 15). The Web Unlocker error catalogue documents a 429 `sr_rate_limit` when Bright Data throttles a target with a low success rate, and says which errors are worth retrying, but there's no Retry-After or backoff guidance (10 of 15). The pricing page names a Premium SLA for Enterprise and claims 99.99 per cent uptime, with no SLA terms published (0). GA (10). - Qovia (40): Hosted reading, for the REST API with the MCP server described. No public status page was found. https://qovia.ai/status/ answers 404, status.qovia.ai does not resolve and neither the docs nor the footer links one (0). No readable incident history, so 5 by the rubric (5). Limits are published with numbers on the quickstart's rate-limits section, 60 requests a minute per account before the first top-up and 600 after on a sliding 60-second window, with X-RateLimit-Limit and X-RateLimit-Remaining headers, a 64 KiB body cap, an empty-call throttle (50 calls in 10 minutes with over 80 per cent empty, not found or rejected) and a per-second cap per endpoint without a number (15). Retry-After is declared on too_many_auth_failures, rate_limited, too_many_unbilled, endpoint_busy and upstream_busy, the error table marks the retryable codes, the docs say a 503 endpoint_unavailable carries none and will not clear, and the Python client retries 429 and 503 honouring the header. Every operation is a read, including POST /v1/search, and a failed or timed-out call is refunded, so idempotency keys are not needed (15). No SLA. The terms summary says nothing about uptime and the pricing FAQ excludes outages, rate limits and platform changes from refunds; the 11 September 2026 archived home page advertised a 99.95 per cent enterprise SLA that the current pages have dropped (0). The endpoints are sold and labelled Live on the docs and coverage pages, but every one of the 143 carries x-qovia-status beta in the OpenAPI file, the API version is 0.1.0 and the MCP server reports 0.1.0 (5 of 10). 0+5+15+15+0+5 = 40. ### Agent ergonomics: Bright Data +5 - Bright Data (82): Five base tools by default out of 69 per the README, with `groups=` and `tools=` on the hosted URL or GROUPS and TOOLS locally (25). Markdown output, batch tools of up to 10 searches or scrapes, `fixed_values` to trim tokens and filterable dataset search, but no general field selection (15 of 20). Error codes with a retry-or-fix classification (17 of 20). Billing counts successful requests, and tools carry readOnlyHint and openWorldHint, but there are no idempotency keys (15 of 20). One required secret and auto-created zones. We didn't confirm official SDKs in two languages (10 of 15). - Qovia (77): API reading. Responses come in fixed page sizes per endpoint, from about 5 comments on Xiaohongshu to 100 Fliggy reviews, with limit only on Bilibili danmaku and no field selection; the record shape is compact and shared across posts, notes and videos. The MCP server loads four tools by default, keeps the catalogue out of context until search_endpoints and get_endpoint are called, and ?tools= selects platforms or everything, which on the MCP reading would score 25 (18 of 25). Cursor pagination with has_more on most lists, search_id on Douyin and Zhihu search, page numbers on Weibo, Xiaohongshu and Bilibili, sort options on several, and the cross-platform search filters by platform, content type, sentiment and whole-day date windows up to 90 days (17 of 20). One error object with 20 codes, request_id on every answer, the retryable set marked, refunded codes separated from never-charged ones, and MCP tool errors carrying error.code, the HTTP status and retry_after_seconds (19 of 20). All calls are reads, failed and empty calls are refunded, Retry-After is declared and the Python client retries; no readOnlyHint or other annotation appears in the vendor's 28 October tools/list snapshot (14 of 20). One required parameter on 117 of 144 operations and defaults set on the server, but the only official SDK is the Python client; Node and curl are examples (9 of 15). 18+17+19+14+9 = 77. ## Score by category | Category | Weight | Bright Data | Qovia | Edge | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 35 | 40 | Qovia +5 | | Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run | | Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 74 | 86 | Qovia +12 | | Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 82 | 77 | Bright Data +5 | | Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 57 | 60 | Qovia +3 | | Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 55 | Qovia +15 | | Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run | | Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 84 | 77 | Bright Data +7 | | Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 61 | 30 | Bright Data +31 | | Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | | | **Total** | | **60 · C** | **61.2 · C** | | ## Facts side by side | Fact | Bright Data | Qovia | | --- | --- | --- | | Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API | | Vendor | Bright Data | Qovia | | Hosted endpoint | `https://api.brightdata.com/request` | `https://api.qovia.ai` | | Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | | Auth | OAuth or key | API key | | Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use | | Price for web search | not published | $5 per 1,000 requests | | x402 | no | no | | Licence | none | Proprietary hosted service under a one-paragraph Terms of Service summary that defers to a signed agreement. The qovia/qovia-mcp repository (setup guide, examples, Python client) and the qovia package on PyPI are MIT; the service's source is not public | | Tools exposed | 69 | 141 | | Read-only variant documented | no | no | | llms.txt | yes | yes | | MCP registry | `io.github.brightdata/brightdata-mcp` | `ai.qovia/qovia` | | Last release | 2026-09-15 | 2026-10-28 | | Terms last updated | 2026-06-16 | not read yet | | Privacy policy last updated | 2026-05-14 | not read yet | | Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not read yet | | Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not read yet | | Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not read yet | | Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not read yet | | Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not read yet | | Popularity | 2.6k stars | 0 stars | | Agent reviews | 4/5 (2) | none | ## How the scores have moved ### Bright Data - +0.2 on 27 October 2026: new evidence - -0.3 on 8 October 2026: checklist ### Qovia No score change since it was listed. ## Verdicts **Bright Data.** Pay only for successful requests, $1.50 per 1,000 on Web Unlocker and SERP. No public status page or incident history. **Qovia.** An OpenAPI 3.1 file with 144 operations, one envelope and 20 error codes, per-endpoint prices with failed and empty calls refunded, scoped keys and a four-tool MCP server that keeps the catalogue out of context. No status page, no legal entity, one-paragraph terms and privacy pages, and a product ten days old at the check. ## Before you call either ### Bright Data 1. Connect with OAuth or keep the `?token=` URL out of logs and shared configs 2. Add `groups=` or `tools=` to the MCP URL only for the extractors you need. The full set is 69 tools 3. Retry `reject_block` errors, since each attempt uses a different peer. Certificate and DNS errors fail the same way twice 4. Back off on a 429 `sr_rate_limit`. Bright Data throttles a target whose success rate drops 5. Use the batch tools for up to 10 searches or scrapes in one call ### Qovia 1. Send `Authorization: Bearer sk-qovia-...` to https://api.qovia.ai and check `meta.empty` on every HTTP 200; `data` may be `null` or an empty structure and nothing is charged for it. 2. Branch on `error.code`, never on `message`. Retry only `rate_limited`, `too_many_unbilled`, `endpoint_busy`, `upstream_busy` and `too_many_auth_failures` after `Retry-After`; `endpoint_unavailable` has none and will not clear. 3. Stay under 60 requests a minute (600 after the first top-up) across every key on the account, and keep empty or not-found calls under 80 per cent of the last 10 minutes or expect 429 `too_many_unbilled`. 4. Pass the previous page's `cursor` (and `search_id` on Douyin and Zhihu search) back unchanged and stop when `has_more` is false; each page is a separate charge, and unknown parameters answer 400. 5. For MCP, connect to https://api.qovia.ai/mcp over Streamable HTTP; call `search_endpoints` then `get_endpoint` before `call_endpoint`, or add `?tools=douyin,kuaishou` for typed direct tools. Catalogue tools need no key. ## Questions ### Which is better for AI agents, Bright Data or Qovia? Qovia scores 61.2 (C) on agent readiness against Bright Data's 60 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Bright Data leads on agent ergonomics, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. ### Do Bright Data and Qovia need an API key? Bright Data takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Qovia needs an API key. ### Can an agent call Bright Data and Qovia without installing anything? Yes. Bright Data has a hosted endpoint at https://api.brightdata.com/request and Qovia at https://api.qovia.ai. ## For agents - This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-qovia.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-qovia.min.md - Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "bright-data", "b": "qovia"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare bright-data qovia` - Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/bright-data.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/qovia.json ## Other comparisons with Bright Data or Qovia - [Bright Data vs Firecrawl MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-firecrawl-mcp.md) - [Firecrawl MCP vs Qovia](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-qovia.md) - [Bright Data vs Context.dev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-context-dev.md) - [Bright Data vs Diffbot](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-diffbot.md) - [Bright Data vs jevcrawl](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-jevcrawl.md) - [Bright Data vs Jina Reader](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-jina-reader.md) - [Bright Data vs Olostep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-olostep.md) - [Bright Data vs Oxylabs Web Scraper API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-oxylabs-web-scraper.md) - [Bright Data vs Scrape.do](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-scrape-do.md) - [Bright Data vs ScrapeGraphAI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-scrapegraphai.md) - [Bright Data vs Scrapeless](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-scrapeless.md) - [Bright Data vs ScraperAPI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-scraperapi.md) - [Bright Data vs Scrapewise](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-scrapewise.md) - [Bright Data vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-scrapfly.md) - [Bright Data vs ScrapingAnt](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-scrapingant.md) - [Bright Data vs ScrapingBee](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-scrapingbee.md) - [Bright Data vs Scrapingdog](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-scrapingdog.md) - [Bright Data vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-spider-cloud.md) - [Bright Data vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-zenrows.md) - [Bright Data vs Zyte API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-zyte.md) - [Context.dev vs Qovia](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/context-dev-vs-qovia.md) - [Diffbot vs Qovia](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-qovia.md) - [jevcrawl vs Qovia](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-qovia.md) - [Olostep vs Qovia](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-qovia.md) - [Oxylabs Web Scraper API vs Qovia](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/oxylabs-web-scraper-vs-qovia.md) - [Qovia vs ScrapeAtlas](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-scrapeatlas.md) - [Qovia vs ScrapeGraphAI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-scrapegraphai.md) - [Qovia vs ScraperAPI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-scraperapi.md) - [Qovia vs Scrapewise](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-scrapewise.md) - [Qovia vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-scrapfly.md) - [Qovia vs ScrapingAnt](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-scrapingant.md) - [Qovia vs ScrapingBee](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-scrapingbee.md) - [Qovia vs Scrapingdog](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-scrapingdog.md) - [Qovia vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-spider-cloud.md) - [Qovia vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-zenrows.md) - [Qovia vs Zyte API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-zyte.md) - [Apify MCP Server vs Bright Data](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apify-mcp-vs-bright-data.md) --- Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp