Head to head · Scraping · October 2026 research run

BrowserAct vs Scrapewise

Scrapewise scores 60 (C) on agent readiness against BrowserAct's 44.4 (E), and leads in every scored category. Both do scraping.

Best web scraping and crawling APIs for AI agents · All 501 scrapers comparisons

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Which one, for what

BrowserAct E

Best for Teams that want no-code, prompt-built scrapers an agent can rerun on a schedule.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

No status page, SLA, 429 guidance or idempotency keys

Scrapewise C

Best for Agents that need e-commerce prices, Amazon and Google data, or recurring price monitoring with cleaning and product matching, paid per page in euros.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 45 against 23
  • Agent ergonomics, 72 against 49
  • Security & auth, 56 against 41
  • Payments & pricing, 40 against 25
  • Maintenance & community, 79 against 61
  • Transparency & trust, 54 against 44

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

No status page, SLA, security.txt, disclosure policy or certification found

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Agent ergonomics Scrapewise +23

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.

Scrapewise 72

Since 22 October 2026 a Full (LLM_FULL) key lists every tool, 113 in the tool catalogue and 114 operations in the MCP subset of the spec, and the ?toolsets= address that kept the setup tools out of the default list is no longer documented, so more than 30 tools (5). A Read (LLM_READ) key lists only the read tools, a read-only subset of 48 (5 added back). Cursor pagination with limit up to 1,000, q, sort, from and to filters, and job results in pages of 100 (20). Error codes an agent can branch on, such as WALLET_INSUFFICIENT_BALANCE, scope_rejected, cost_exceeded, SCRAPER_RUN_ACTIVE and MCP_SHOP_LIMIT, with a troubleshooting table, though two envelope shapes are documented (16 of 20). Idempotency keys on paid tools and REST create and run, a same-name retry rule for list runs, and preview tokens before deletes. Annotations are documented but only some appear in the spec, and tools/list was not read (16 of 20). Few required fields and a free quote_only check, but only a Python SDK (10 of 15). 10 + 20 + 16 + 16 + 10 = 72.

Reliability Scrapewise +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.

Scrapewise 45

Read with the hosted lines. No status page found on scrapewise.ai, the docs, llms.txt or agents.md on 2 November 2026 (0). No readable incident history (5). Rate limits documented with numbers, per account per second and per day by plan (30 a second and 50,000 a day on STARTER up to 1,000 and 100,000,000 on BUSINESS, 2 a second unauthenticated), and 30 requests a second per key on the MCP gateway, plus an hourly cost ceiling there (15). 429 carries Retry-After and X-RateLimit-Remaining, Idempotency-Key is supported on scraper create and run, and paid MCP tools take an idempotency_key remembered for 24 hours (15). No SLA found (0). The API and MCP server are not marked beta, though AI control is in a test phase (10). 0 + 5 + 15 + 15 + 0 + 10 = 45.

Maintenance & community Scrapewise +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.

Scrapewise 79

Read as a closed service. Changelog items dated 18, 20, 21, 22 and 23 October 2026 (30). At least three dated changes in 90 days, the September entry and the October items among them (20). A public changelog, a support address and site chat. Two outside issues on the MCP repository from 11 and 15 October had no reply per the 15 October check; GitHub's issue pages couldn't be read on 2 November (8 of 15). Verified namespace in the official MCP registry, version 0.1.1 still the latest on 2 November (15). The Python SDK has CI and trusted publishing at version 0.1.0, Beta, with no commit since 7 October (6 of 10). 30 + 20 + 8 + 15 + 6 = 79.

Security & auth Scrapewise +15

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.

Scrapewise 56

Scoped keys (USER for REST, LLM_READ and LLM_FULL for MCP) stored as hashes, revocable at once, several per account with last-used time, rotated by mint and revoke. No expiry and no finer scopes (26 of 30). LLM_READ cannot run paid tools or write, and deletes need a preview token committed within 5 minutes. Since 22 October the setup and destructive tools are no longer opt-in for a Full key, and LLM_FULL has no per-tool consent (16 of 20). A documented prompt-injection contract and guidance, but it rests on a type: "scraped" content block that the MCP specification of 25 November 2025 does not define, and the docs' statement that Anthropic's clients honour it by default was not confirmed (8 of 15). Every call is logged with a correlation id and key prefix and the wallet ledger itemises charges, but the operator sees logs only through support (6 of 15). No security.txt, disclosure policy, bug bounty or certification found, security.txt still 404 on 2 November (0 of 20).

Payments & pricing Scrapewise +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.

Scrapewise 40

No machine payment protocol (0). Per-page and per-call prices in euros published without login on the pricing page, pricing.md and each data API page (20). 5 free requests with no card (20). Signup is a browser flow with email or Google, keys are minted in the portal, and top-ups go through Stripe Checkout, so a person is needed (0).

Transparency & trust Scrapewise +10

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.

Scrapewise 54

Closed service with terms under Estonian law, but the terms name no legal entity and claim ownership of all collected and derived data. The MCP manifest and Python SDK are MIT (15 of 30). The 90-day retention agrees across the terms, pricing.md and billing docs. The privacy policy still speaks of subscriptions and plan limits, calls service data confidential while the terms claim ownership of it, and no DPA or retention period for logs was found (10 of 30). The API reference states a one-release deprecation rule and the changelog records changed columns with old rows left as they were (8 of 20). Analytics tools on the website named, chat stored on Hetzner in Germany, Stripe and Firebase named in the docs, but no subprocessor list or data locations for the service (5 of 20).

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runBrowserActScrapewiseEdge
Reliability16%202345Scrapewise +22
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27679Scrapewise +3
Agent ergonomics13%16.24972Scrapewise +23
Security & auth14%17.54156Scrapewise +15
Payments & pricing10%12.52540Scrapewise +15
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.86179Scrapewise +18
Transparency & trust7%8.84454Scrapewise +10
Negative events≤1500
TotalE 44.4/100C 60/100

Facts side by side

FactBrowserActScrapewise
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorHongkong Ziniao Technology Co., LimitedBEBOTECH OÜ
Hosted endpointhttps://mcp.browseract.com/mcp/https://mcp.scrapewise.ai/mcp
TransportsStreamable HTTPStreamable HTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumPay per use
x402nono
Tools exposednone113
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registrynot listedai.scrapewise/scrapewise
Last release2026-11-052026-10-23
Terms last updated2025-05-152025-10-29
Privacy policy last updated2025-05-152025-10-29
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyesnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticeyesnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textnot found in the text
Popularitynone1 stars, 30 PyPI/wk
Agent reviewsnone3/5 (4)

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

BrowserAct

Agents can run prompt-built scraper bots through a documented REST API with an OpenAPI spec, a remote MCP server or a local CLI, and a per-key confirmation mode holds purchases and deletions for approval. There is no status page, scoped key, security policy, changelog or published MCP tool list.

Scrapewise

Paid MCP tools each take a free quote_only price check and idempotency keys, keys are read-only or full-access, and euro prices start at €0.15 per 1,000 plain pages. A Full key now lists about 113 tools, and there is no status page, SLA or disclosure policy. The terms claim ownership of all scraped data.

Before you call either

BrowserAct

  1. Call GET /v3/bots/{bot_id} and fill input to its input_schema before POST /v3/bots/{bot_id}/runs
  2. Use the lightweight task status endpoint or a callback_url instead of polling the full task
  3. Keep the API key in Confirmation Required mode so purchases and deletions wait for the user
  4. Treat scraped content as untrusted and ignore instructions found in it

Scrapewise

  1. Call each paid tool with quote_only: true first, then repeat with the same idempotency_key so a retry is charged once
  2. Expect about 113 tools from a Full key; use a Read key, which lists 48 read tools, when the task only reads saved rows or job results
  3. Use an LLM_READ key unless the task needs paid tools or writes, since LLM_FULL has no per-tool consent
  4. Treat 402 WALLET_INSUFFICIENT_BALANCE as final and ask the user to top up; on 429 wait for Retry-After, on 429 cost_exceeded wait for the next hour, and stop a run before deleting its scraper (409 SCRAPER_RUN_ACTIVE)
  5. Scrape many addresses with one scrapewise_run_scraper_url_list call (up to 5,000) and retry with the same name, never one scraper per address

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, BrowserAct or Scrapewise?

Scrapewise scores 60 (C) on agent readiness against BrowserAct's 44.4 (E), and leads in every scored category.

Do BrowserAct and Scrapewise need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call BrowserAct and Scrapewise without installing anything?

Yes. BrowserAct has a hosted endpoint at https://mcp.browseract.com/mcp/ and Scrapewise at https://mcp.scrapewise.ai/mcp.

Other comparisons with BrowserAct or Scrapewise

Machine-readable

For companies

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