# BrowserAct vs Outcrawl (slim)

> Outcrawl scores 62.4 (B) to BrowserAct's 44.4 (E) for scraping. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browseract-vs-outcrawl.md (~6,200 tokens) · this version ~3,330 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browseract-vs-outcrawl.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browseract-vs-outcrawl
- 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
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Outcrawl scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against BrowserAct's 44.4 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. BrowserAct leads on schema & documentation. Both do scraping.

- BrowserAct: E 44.4, rank #1204 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/browseract.min.md
- Outcrawl: B 62.4, rank #558 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/outcrawl.min.md
- BrowserAct, good for Teams that want no-code, prompt-built scrapers an agent can rerun on a schedule. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 76 against 71.
- Outcrawl, good for Agents that want one key and one balance for reading pages, walking a site, searching with rendered results and handing a signed-in or multi-step task to a hosted browser agent with a hard budget, and teams on TypeScript that want a residential-exit browser over CDP with a replay of every session. Ahead on Reliability, 45 against 23; Agent ergonomics, 83 against 49; Security & auth, 66 against 41; Payments & pricing, 40 against 25; Maintenance & community, 79 against 61; Transparency & trust, 56 against 44. Also Free to start without a card.

| Category | BrowserAct | Outcrawl |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 23 | 45 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 76 | 71 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 49 | 83 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 41 | 66 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 25 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 61 | 79 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 44 | 56 |

| Fact (where they differ) | BrowserAct | Outcrawl |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Hongkong Ziniao Technology Co., Limited | Aeonmind LLC (Outcrawl) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.browseract.com/mcp/` | `https://api.outcrawl.ai/v1` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Price for scraping | not published | $4.90 per 1,000 pages |
| Licence | none | Proprietary hosted service under Aeonmind LLC's terms of service (last updated 1 November 2026). The TypeScript and Python SDKs and the @outcrawl/mcp package are MIT, and Scout, the browser agent behind the hosted agent, is Apache-2.0 in a read-only GitHub mirror |
| Tools exposed | none | 29 |
| Last release | 2026-11-05 | 2026-10-20 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-05-15 | 2026-11-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-05-15 | 2026-11-01 |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | none | 948 stars, 53 npm/wk |

Why the edge:
- Agent ergonomics, Outcrawl +34: BrowserAct 49 (Graded on the API, since the MCP tool list isn't published. Task results come back whole, with no field selection found (10). Lists of bots, templates and tasks are paginated (15). Errors carry numeric codes with documented meanings for a few cases (12). No idempotency key on task creation; webhooks and a status endpoint avoid polling loops (5). No official SDK in two languages; the CLI is Python (7). 10 + 15 + 12 + 5 + 7 = 49.); Outcrawl 83 (API reading. Scrape returns main content only by default with `formats` picking markdown, html, rawHtml, links, screenshots or schema JSON, search renders page bodies only on request, agent events take a `level` and an `after` cursor, the MCP server shows request bodies up to a character limit and says when it truncated, and the MCP surface is 29 tools with no toolsets (20 of 25). Cursor pagination on crawl results, agent results and downloads, `limit`, depth and path filters on crawl, status, outcome, task and age filters on sessions, and usage grouped by hour, day, month or capability (20). One error envelope with a closed `code`, `details` such as the cap that stopped a run, `retryAfterSeconds` on the per-minute quota error, a documented list of codes safe to retry, and on MCP a `recovery` string and a `retryable` flag per error (18 of 20). No idempotency key on any route, a repeated agent, crawl or monitor submit runs twice, and `concurrency_limit` carries no retry hint; cancel is idempotent, `integration_changed` (409) guards updates, and the npm MCP package sets readOnlyHint on GET tools, destructiveHint on DELETE tools and idempotentHint on either, which the hosted server was not read to confirm (10 of 20). Scrape needs a URL alone, agent runs need `caps.budget` on the API and SDKs with the MCP server defaulting it, and official SDKs exist in TypeScript and Python beside a CLI (15). 20+20+18+10+15 = 83.)
- Security & auth, Outcrawl +25: BrowserAct 41 (One account-wide API key type, revocable and listed with last-used time, but without scopes or expiry (18). Confirmation Required mode holds purchases and asset creation or deletion for approval in the BrowserAct page (14). Scraped pages are untrusted, and no prompt-injection guidance was found (3). Keys show last use and runs keep logs (6). No security page, disclosure policy, certification or bug bounty found (0). 18 + 14 + 3 + 6 + 0 = 41.); Outcrawl 66 (OAuth 2.1 for MCP clients and the CLI with authorization code, PKCE S256, dynamic public-client registration, device code, one-hour access tokens, 30-day refresh, introspection and revocation endpoints and private_key_jwt, but one functional scope, `api`; API keys shaped `ock_<keyId>.<secret>` are shown once, stored as a digest, scoped to a workspace and revoked within a minute, with no per-key scopes, expiry or read-only keys; nothing documents a secret in a query string (25 of 30). No read-only key or scope. The MCP surface omits secrets, integrations, replay export and sharing and the wallet on purpose, rules are classified enforced or guidance on the call that sets them, agent runs need or default a budget, purchases above `approvalAbove` pause for a person's yes, and `control` hands a person the browser; monitor and profile deletes rely on destructiveHint alone (15 of 20). Every tool returns untrusted page content. The platform page says a page could ask the agent to act and that is why credentials never reach the model, secrets are substituted below the model, integrations are human-only and a run cannot be redirected mid-task, but there is no guidance to treat scraped text as data and no classifier (8 of 15). Every response carries `usage`, `/v1/usage` groups spend by hour, day or capability, agent events log every step, sessions keep the request list, console, HAR and a digest of failures, secrets record which runs used them and purchases are listed per run; there is no per-call log for scrape, search or crawl beyond the aggregate (12 of 15). No security.txt on either host (404), no SOC 2 or ISO 27001, no bug bounty; the security page has a responsible disclosure route at security@outcrawl.ai with a 90-day window and a no-legal-action statement (6 of 20). 25+15+8+12+6 = 66.)
- Reliability, Outcrawl +22: BrowserAct 23 (Hosted reading. No status page found (0) and no readable incident history (5). The docs say there are no rate limits, and give concurrency by plan (2 free, up to 20 for paid API users) and a 7-hour task cap (8). No 429 or retry guidance, and no idempotency keys on task creation (0). No SLA (0). No beta label on the API or MCP server (10). 0 + 5 + 8 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 23.); Outcrawl 45 (Hosted reading, for the REST API with the MCP server that shares its limits. No public status page was found. None is linked from the site or the docs, https://outcrawl.ai/status answers 404 and status.outcrawl.ai does not answer (0). No readable incident history, so the floor (5). Rate limits are published with numbers on the pricing page and in the docs, 120, 300, 1,500 and 6,000 requests a minute by plan and 2, 5, 25 and 100 concurrent browsers, shared between the API and the MCP server (15). Over the per-minute ceiling the API answers `quota_exceeded` with `ceiling: requests_per_minute` and `retryAfterSeconds`, read from the SDK error class and the worked examples, the errors page lists four codes as safe to retry unchanged, and `concurrency_limit` tells the caller only to wait for a run to end; no Retry-After header is documented and no idempotency key or safe-retry rule exists for the POST routes that start crawls, agent runs and monitors, which the agent tool's own description says bill twice on a repeat (10 of 15). An SLA exists only on Enterprise, a 99.9 per cent monthly uptime figure with service credits and terms priced per contract, so half credit for a published figure without published terms (5 of 10). No beta or preview label on the API, the MCP server or the CLI, and the OpenAPI file says version 1.0.0, though both SDKs are at 0.4.15 and the domain is nine weeks old (10). 0+5+15+10+5+10 = 45.)
- Maintenance & community, Outcrawl +18: BrowserAct 61 (browser-act-cli 1.6.2 on 5 November 2026, read from PyPI's release feed (30). Six CLI releases from 15 October to 5 November (20). A closed service with a support address, but no public changelog or issue tracker found (8). No official SDKs and no entry in the official MCP registry (0). The CLI package carries no licence or repository in its metadata (3). 30 + 20 + 8 + 0 + 3 = 61.); Outcrawl 79 (@outcrawl/sdk and the PyPI package outcrawl both reached 0.4.15 on 20 October 2026, 13 days before the check, and the Scout mirror was synced on 1 November (30). 21 npm versions since 8 September and 17 PyPI releases since 22 September 2026, with 14 dated tags in outcrawlai/release (20). Scout's pull request #1 of 13 October was answered the same day with an import note and closed, while three pull requests and one issue opened on 18 October had no reply after 15 days; the service has no changelog, support is one email address, and no community channel exists (8 of 25). Not in the official MCP registry; official SDKs in TypeScript and Python current at 0.4.15, with a CLI (15). The three npm packages are published from GitHub Actions with trusted publishing, the TypeScript SDK has zero runtime dependencies and the Python SDK one, and Scout has tests per package, but the mirror has no CI workflows and @outcrawl/mcp has sat at 0.4.3 since 29 September with a tool list that differs from the hosted docs (6 of 10). 30+20+8+15+6 = 79.)
- Payments & pricing, Outcrawl +15: BrowserAct 25 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Plan prices and credit costs per bot build, run and workflow step are public, but there is no direct per-call price (15). A free plan with 200 credits; whether it needs a card isn't stated (10). A person signs up and creates the key in the dashboard (0). 0 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 25.); Outcrawl 40 (No x402, MPP or L402 in the OpenAPI file, the docs, the pricing pages or the terms (0). Per-unit rates published without a login, 1 credit a page, 5 credits per 10 search results, 1 credit a browser minute, 2,000 credits a GB and 1 credit a monitor check, with the dollar rate per plan ($4.90 per 1,000 credits on Builder down to about $3.20 on Scale), top-up prices per 10,000 and an estimate of about 15 credits a minute for agent runs (20). Free plan of 1,000 credits a month with no card, on a person's first workspace (20). A person signs in with Google, GitHub, an email code or a magic link behind reCAPTCHA, and MCP's OAuth consent needs that browser sign-in; no keyless route, no programmatic key creation (0). 0+20+20+0 = 40.)
- Transparency & trust, Outcrawl +12: BrowserAct 44 (Closed service with published terms naming the operating company and governing law (15). The privacy policy of 15 May 2025 states retention by category and that crawled data is kept per plan and deletable by the user (15). No deprecation policy or notices found (0). No sub-processors or data locations named (3). 15 + 15 + 0 + 3 = 33.); Outcrawl 56 (Closed hosted service under terms last updated 1 November 2026 that name Aeonmind LLC, trading as Outcrawl, Delaware law and a liability cap; the SDKs and the MCP package are MIT and Scout, the agent behind the hosted agent, is Apache-2.0 in a read-only mirror of a private repository (20 of 30). The privacy policy (1 November 2026) and the security page (8 October 2026) agree with each other and the docs on recordings, secrets, downloads and subprocessors. Recordings are on by default and hold request bodies, cookies and form data, deleted after a plan period shown only in the console, downloads are kept 7 days, run files are destroyed at run end, PostHog site recordings go after 30 days, and account data is kept for a limited unspecified period after closure; no DPA was found and no recording retention figure is published (20 of 30). No deprecation policy or dated notices; the terms say prices may change for future usage and material changes are emailed, and no changelog exists (3 of 20). Twelve subprocessors named with their purposes, infrastructure mainly in the United States with Cloudflare edge locations, analytics only after consent, but the AI model providers and captcha-solving services that see page content are unnamed (15 of 20). 20+20+3+15 = 58.)