# BrowserAct vs Oxylabs Web Scraper API (slim)

> Oxylabs Web Scraper scores 62.9 (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-oxylabs-web-scraper.md (~5,700 tokens) · this version ~2,830 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browseract-vs-oxylabs-web-scraper.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browseract-vs-oxylabs-web-scraper
- 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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Oxylabs Web Scraper API scores 62.9 (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
- Oxylabs Web Scraper API: B 62.9, rank #535 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/oxylabs-web-scraper.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 68. Also No incidents deducted, where Oxylabs Web Scraper API loses 3 points for them.
- Oxylabs Web Scraper API, good for Agents that need parsed Google, Amazon and other large-site results or bulk asynchronous jobs through one API. Ahead on Reliability, 75 against 23; Agent ergonomics, 79 against 49; Security & auth, 53 against 41; Payments & pricing, 40 against 25; Maintenance & community, 82 against 61; Transparency & trust, 64 against 44. Also Runs on your own machine; Free to start without a card.

| Category | BrowserAct | Oxylabs Web Scraper API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 23 | 75 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 76 | 68 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 49 | 79 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 41 | 53 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 25 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 61 | 82 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 44 | 64 |

| Fact (where they differ) | BrowserAct | Oxylabs Web Scraper API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Hongkong Ziniao Technology Co., Limited | oxylabs, UAB |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.browseract.com/mcp/` | `https://realtime.oxylabs.io/v1/queries` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| Licence | none | Proprietary service under the Oxylabs General Conditions. The MCP server and the Python SDK on GitHub are MIT |
| Tools exposed | none | 10 |
| MCP registry | not listed | `io.oxylabs/oxylabs-mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-11-05 | 2026-10-29 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-05-15 | 2026-10-05 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-05-15 | 2024-10-14 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | none | 18k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Reliability, Oxylabs Web Scraper API +52: 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.); Oxylabs Web Scraper API 75 (Graded on the Web Scraper API (Classic) surface. Status page at uptime.oxylabs.io on incident.io with separate components for Scraper APIs Push-Pull and Real-Time (20). Its feed lists two incidents since 4 August 2026, a Datacenter Proxies outage on 13 August that doesn't touch this API and, on 26 October, 12 minutes (05:34 to 05:46 on the page's clock) on both Scraper API components and Web Unblocker. The page labels it a full outage, but its own text says users "may experience degraded performance, intermittent errors, or timeouts", so we read it as partial and minor (20 of 30). Job rates per plan are published, from 10 a second on the free trial to 100 on Business and Corporate, with rendered-job limits (15). 429 is not billed, responses carry `x-ratelimit` limit and remaining headers, and 612 and 613 faults can be retried at no cost. No Retry-After or backoff guidance was found for this API (10 of 15). No SLA is published. The General Conditions promise reasonable efforts (0). Generally available (10).)
- Agent ergonomics, Oxylabs Web Scraper API +30: 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.); Oxylabs Web Scraper API 79 (The MCP server lists 10 tools, four for this API and six for AI Studio, and the REST API can return Markdown or parsed JSON in place of HTML (22 of 25). `start_page`, `pages` and `limit` on search sources, custom parsing instructions and a result aggregator (16 of 20). Documented HTTP codes with messages, a `parse_status_code` per parsed result and job statuses, but errors are prose messages with no stable code field (14 of 20). All tools carry `readOnlyHint`, faulted jobs are not billed and Push-Pull results can be re-read by job ID for 24 hours. No idempotency key (14 of 20). Only `source` and a URL or query are required, with official SDKs for Python and Go (13 of 15).)
- Maintenance & community, Oxylabs Web Scraper API +21: 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.); Oxylabs Web Scraper API 82 (The newest release is MCP server v0.10.2 on 29 October 2026, which changes how the client is reported in request headers, after v0.10.0 on 15 October added API-token sign-in (30). In the 90 days from 4 August, MCP releases v0.9.0 and v0.9.1 (10 August), v0.9.2 (14 August), v0.9.3 (7 September), v0.10.0 and v0.10.2, with v0.10.1 (28 October, dependency caps only) counted half, and four changelog entries tagged for this API (11, 17, 20 and 24 August) (20). Dated public changelog, support by email and round-the-clock live chat per the docs. GitHub issues were unread because github.com refused us (10 of 15). The MCP server is in the official registry as `io.oxylabs/oxylabs-mcp`, now at 0.10.2 (published 29 October), and official Python and Go SDKs exist (15). The MCP repository runs lint and test workflows. The Python SDK's last release is still 3.0.0 on 9 March 2026 and the Go SDK's 1.0.0 on 6 September 2024 (7 of 10).)
- Transparency & trust, Oxylabs Web Scraper API +20: 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.); Oxylabs Web Scraper API 64 (Closed service under public General Conditions naming oxylabs, UAB of Vilnius, still last updated 5 October 2026, with MIT clients (15 of 30). The privacy policy was last reviewed on 22 October 2026 and still doesn't name the controller or say anything about scraped content. Clause 4.3.9 of the General Conditions lets Oxylabs keep data gathered through Web API and Web Unblocker and use it at its discretion, and it is unclear whether Web API there includes this Classic API. A DPA is published and Push-Pull results are kept for at least 24 hours (14 of 30). No deprecation policy. Removals appear in the changelog on the day they take effect, and the General Conditions give 14 days' notice of contract changes (6 of 20). The DPA says the sub-processor list is available on request. The privacy policy names some vendors, and data locations are given only as the EEA and the US (7 of 20).)
- Payments & pricing, Oxylabs Web Scraper API +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.); Oxylabs Web Scraper API 40 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-1,000-result prices by target and plan are public, now on the Web API /Scrape pricing page that the old Web Scraper API pricing URL redirects to, at the same Starter rates (20). A one-time $5 welcome credit needs no payment details (20). A person registers in the dashboard and creates the product instance (0). The Classic overview page still says to contact the team for credentials, so the trial route for this surface is unconfirmed.)
- Security & auth, Oxylabs Web Scraper API +12: 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.); Oxylabs Web Scraper API 53 (A username and password per product instance over HTTP Basic, with an editable password, optional IP whitelisting and several instances per account. The MCP server's v0.10.0 (15 October 2026) adds Web Scraper API tokens sent as a Bearer header, but the API docs still describe only the username and password, and no scopes were found (20 of 30). The Proxy Endpoint puts the pair in the proxy URL and needs TLS verification switched off, which we note without the query-string deduction. Scraping is read-only apart from POST requests to targets, callbacks and uploads to the customer's bucket, each instance can take a spending limit that disables it, and every MCP tool is marked read-only (10 of 20). No guidance on untrusted page content was found in the Web Scraper API docs, the MCP README or the agent skill (2 of 15). `GET /v2/stats` and the dashboard report usage by day and source, and jobs accept client notes. No per-request access log was found (7 of 15). ISO/IEC 27001:2022, SOC 2 Type 2 for Scraper API and yearly penetration tests per the trust centre (per the 8 October check, not re-read on 2 November). The disclosure programme is still paused except for critical issues sent to security@oxylabs.io, security.txt returns 404 and no bug bounty was found. That is above the 12 given for certification claims with no disclosure route (fireworks-inference, people-data-labs), because a route for critical issues and penetration tests are published (14 of 20).)