# Crawl4AI vs Jina Reader (slim)

> Jina Reader scores 51.9 (D) to Crawl4AI's 43.9 (E) for scraping. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crawl4ai-vs-jina-reader.md (~5,850 tokens) · this version ~3,230 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crawl4ai-vs-jina-reader.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crawl4ai-vs-jina-reader
- 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)

Jina Reader scores 51.9 (D) on agent readiness against Crawl4AI's 43.9 (E), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Crawl4AI leads on security & auth, payments & pricing, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do scraping.

- Crawl4AI: E 43.9, rank #1224 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/crawl4ai.min.md
- Jina Reader: D 51.9, rank #999 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/jina-reader.min.md
- Crawl4AI, good for Agents that need cheap page-to-Markdown at volume, Google results and search in one key, or a free self-hosted Python crawler. Ahead on Security & auth, 46 against 32; Payments & pricing, 45 against 35; Maintenance & community, 83 against 45; Transparency & trust, 70 against 62. Also Free to start without a card.
- Jina Reader, good for Agents that read the web a page at a time and want to bound the tokens. Ahead on Reliability, 70 against 35; Schema & documentation, 77 against 55; Agent ergonomics, 80 against 67.

| Category | Crawl4AI | Jina Reader |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 35 | 70 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 55 | 77 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 67 | 80 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 46 | 32 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 45 | 35 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 83 | 45 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 70 | 62 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Crawl4AI | Jina Reader |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | CONTEXT4AI PTE LTD | Jina AI (Elastic) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.crawl4ai.com/mcp` | `https://r.jina.ai/` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| Price for scraping | $0.50 per 1,000 pages | not published |
| Tools exposed | 16 | none |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-14 | 2026-10-23 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-10-15 | 2026-05-04 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-10-15 | 2026-09-07 |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 87k stars, 368k PyPI/wk | 12k stars |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.5/5 (2) |

Why the edge:
- Maintenance & community, Crawl4AI +38: Crawl4AI 83 (Library v0.9.5 on 14 October 2026, 23 days before 6 November, and the cloud added /serp on 8 October (30). v0.9.3 (31 August), v0.9.4 (23 September) and v0.9.5 (14 October) in the 90 days from 8 August (20). 56 open issues on 6 November, the newest triaged with Bug, Needs Triage, In-progress, Root caused or Done labels within days, plus a Discord. Reply authors weren't read (20 of 25). Not in the official MCP registry, and the cloud has no official SDK; the Python library is current on PyPI (8 of 15). The security workflow runs a test suite and a default-posture gate, and releases are built and checked with twine. No general test workflow on push found (5 of 10). 30 + 20 + 20 + 8 + 5 = 83.); Jina Reader 45 (The API reference Jina builds in the jina-ai/meta-prompt repository records dated changes to Reader's published interface since it first appeared on 14 October, with /echo paths added on 21 October and the `webBotAuth` parameter and Web Bot Auth paths on 23 October 2026, the newest dated API change. The MCP server's last version, 1.10.0, is dated 18 September (30). The MCP versions 1.5.0 to 1.10.0 between 11 August and 18 September are untagged bumps in package.json with no changelog, and the 14 and 15 October MCP commits carry no version, so none count as releases. The reference changes carry no version or changelog entry either (0). 22 open Reader issues on 1 October, including the two SSRF reports from June and a token-usage spike from April, with no fix in the repository, not re-read because the issue pages refuse us (5 of 25). No official SDK, the MCP server is the maintained client (5 of 15). Reader has CI workflows, the MCP repository has none (5 of 10).)
- Reliability, Jina Reader +35: Crawl4AI 35 (Graded on the hosted lines, for Crawl4AI Cloud, which the README and llms.txt now lead with and which an agent calls through its MCP server; the library would read on the local lines. No status page is linked, and status.crawl4ai.com fails TLS (0). No incident history readable (5). Per-plan limits are published with numbers in /v1/prices, from 10 requests a minute and 2 at a time on Free to 1,500 and 50 on Scale (15). 429 carries X-RateLimit headers and a message, 503 busy says to resend after a few seconds, and MCP job submissions take an idempotency key, but no Retry-After or backoff guidance (10 of 15). No SLA found in the terms or pricing (0). Prices and the free credit are a soft launch, /serp is beta and /answer experimental, while scrape, extract and search carry no beta label (5 of 10). 0 + 5 + 15 + 10 + 0 + 5 = 35.); Jina Reader 70 (Atlassian Statuspage at status.jina.ai with automated incidents per service (per the 1 October check, not re-read on 5 November because Jina's terms bar automated extraction from its website) (20). On 1 October the feed reached back only to 15 September 2026. In that window r.jina.ai had no incidents and s.jina.ai had eight five-minute ones. Minor only, less 5 for the short window. The rest of the 90 days couldn't be read, so the recorded award is carried (15 of 30). Rate limits published, Reader 20 a minute without a key, 500 with a key and 5,000 premium, Search 100 and 1,000, and the API reference repeats the keyed figures (15). Jina's merged OpenAPI file (docs.jina.ai/openapi.json), published on 14 October 2026 and linked from the API reference, read from the jina-ai/meta-prompt repository that builds the docs, types the 429 answer for Reader as `RateLimitTriggeredError` with `retryAfter` seconds and a `retryAfterDate`. No backoff guidance, and Reader takes no writes (10). No SLA found (0). GA (10).)
- Schema & documentation, Jina Reader +22: Crawl4AI 55 (No OpenAPI or similar contract for the cloud API, and the MCP tool schemas are only in the live tools/list, which needs a key. /v1/prices is machine-readable but covers prices, not calls (0). llms.txt of 304 lines written for agents (10). Each endpoint says what it is for and when to choose another, such as trying without a proxy first, using `browser` only when `auto` misses content and /scrape/jobs for slow lists (16 of 20). Parameters are listed with types, defaults, allowed values (`format` both, md or html; `proxy` none, isp or residential) and limits, in prose (10 of 15). Curl examples per endpoint and documented error strings per status with whether each is charged (14 of 15). No changelog for the cloud API, only dated notes such as /serp 'added 8 Oct 2026'. The library has a dated CHANGELOG (5 of 15). 0 + 10 + 16 + 10 + 14 + 5 = 55.); Jina Reader 77 (Jina's merged OpenAPI file (docs.jina.ai/openapi.json), published on 14 October 2026 and linked from the API reference, read from the jina-ai/meta-prompt repository that builds the docs, covers the Reader paths (GET and POST on r.jina.ai) with 98 typed parameters each and a typed response for every status. The Markdown reference at docs.jina.ai/api.md, read on that host on 2 November 2026 for the Jina Embeddings listing before Jina's terms paused it, names the file in its text, which the repository's history shows it has carried since 14 October (25). The reference is also published as Markdown at docs.jina.ai/api.md, and docs.jina.ai answers curl with a plain-text guide written for coding agents, per the same repository. The Reader README is a full Markdown reference of every header (10). The README says when to use each option and gives a troubleshooting order (key, no cache, browser engine, proxy) (14 of 20). Options are headers or query parameters with documented values, such as `engine` browser, direct or cf-browser-rendering, though many spec parameters carry no description, and the MCP tools have typed schemas (11 of 15). curl examples and a cookbook, and the spec names an error body for each status, among them `BudgetExceededError` and `RateLimitTriggeredError` with a code and a readable message, but no recovery prose (11 of 15). No API changelog. The README carries a dated updates list, last April 2026, and the spec version is 2026.10.13.1624 (6 of 15).)
- Security & auth, Crawl4AI +14: Crawl4AI 46 (Bearer keys, shown once and regenerable, with 3 to 30 keys per plan. claude.ai and ChatGPT sign in through a flow that advertises one scope, `mcp`, and each app shows as a revocable key. No per-key scopes, and the docs don't offer the key in a URL (22 of 30). A key can call billing routes, and the MCP `topup` and `recharge` tools charge the saved card, though llms.txt tells agents to ask first and accounts can set a spend cap. No read-only key (6 of 20). Scraped pages are untrusted text and no prompt-injection guidance was found in llms.txt or the API docs (0). Per-call cost, balance and fetch path in response headers and fields, no access log documented (6 of 15). The security page (4 October 2026) gives a disclosure process with fix targets and says SOC 2 is in progress, and the library publishes GitHub advisories with reporter credits. security.txt redirects to a 404, and no bounty found (12 of 20). 22 + 6 + 0 + 6 + 12 = 46.); Jina Reader 32 (One Bearer key per account, revocable, no scopes, shared with Search, Embeddings and Reranker, and Reader also runs with no key at all (20). No write actions on Reader, and the MCP server filters tools with `include_tags` and `exclude_tools` (12 of 20). Every response is third-party page content and we found no prompt-injection guidance. `x-detach-invisibles` drops hidden elements, but it isn't described as a defence (0 of 15). No per-request log found (0 of 15). No security.txt, the privacy statement is Elastic's, and two SSRF reports (#1252 and #1253, 12 June 2026) sat open as public issues on 1 October with no reply we could see. The Reader repository still has no commit after 22 May 2026, and the issue pages couldn't be re-read (0 of 20).)
- Agent ergonomics, Jina Reader +13: Crawl4AI 67 (16 MCP tools, six of them for billing and support (15 of 25). `format` md or html, `parse` opt-in blocks, batch limits and job results paged 500 at a time over HTTP and 50 over MCP (16 of 20). String error codes an agent can branch on (blocked, login-wall, no-answer, busy, no_credit, plan_cap, spend_cap), each with whether it is charged (18 of 20). Failed and cancelled calls aren't charged and `jobs_submit` takes an idempotency key, but no tool annotations are documented and two tools can charge the saved card (10 of 20). Only `url` or `q` is required. There is no official SDK for the cloud API; the docs give curl and standard-library Python and Node examples (8 of 15). 15 + 16 + 18 + 10 + 8 = 67.); Jina Reader 80 (`x-max-tokens` truncates and `x-token-budget` rejects oversized pages, `x-target-selector` returns one element, and images, links and media can be dropped or reduced to text (25). Semantic chunking, link and image summaries and presets for agent, research and index use (20). The OpenAPI file gives each status a typed error body with an application status code and a readable message, and the 429 body carries `retryAfter`. No per-error recovery guidance (12 of 20). Reads are GETs and safe to retry, with a cache and `x-no-cache` to bypass it. The MCP tools carry no readOnly or destructive hints (13 of 20). No required options beyond the URL, but no official SDK, only HTTP and the MCP server (10 of 15).)
- Payments & pricing, Crawl4AI +10: Crawl4AI 45 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-endpoint credit costs, effort multipliers and plan rates are public at /v1/prices without a login, with 1 credit = $0.001 (20). 1,000 free credits a month, no card (20). A 7-day pass key comes from a click on api.crawl4ai.com without an account, which is still a person in a browser, and a permanent key needs email verification (5 of 20). 0 + 20 + 20 + 5 = 45.); Jina Reader 35 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Billed in tokens with no price in any currency on the Reader page, which points to a separate table, per the 1 October check, not re-read on 5 November because Jina's terms bar automated extraction from its website (0). Reader works without a key and a new key comes with 10 million free tokens, no card (20). An agent can read pages with no signup at 20 a minute, but Search needs a key (15 of 20).)