Head to head · Scraping · October 2026 research run

Crawl4AI vs Scrape.do

Scrape.do and Crawl4AI score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 44 (E) and 43.9 (E). Crawl4AI leads on agent ergonomics, security & auth, payments & pricing, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do scraping.

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

Which one, for what

Crawl4AI E

Best 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

  • Agent ergonomics, 67 against 62
  • Security & auth, 46 against 23
  • Payments & pricing, 45 against 35
  • Maintenance & community, 83 against 45
  • Transparency & trust, 70 against 49

Also in its favour

  • Open source

Watch for

No status page, SLA or OpenAPI spec for the cloud API found

Scrape.do E

Best for Cheap bulk fetching through rotating proxies when you call HTTP directly and keep the token server-side.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 40 against 35

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where Crawl4AI loses 10 points for them

Watch for

Token travels in the query string on the main API

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.

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.

Scrape.do 45

Last changelog entry on 31 July 2026, a Gemini scraper API (20). Two dated entries since 3 July, 29 and 31 July, against the three the rubric asks for (10 of 20). Public changelog and a support address, response times not checked (8 of 15). The only official SDK, @scrape-do/client, hasn't shipped since 13 November 2024 (5 of 15). No public repository or CI to check (2 of 10).

Security & auth Crawl4AI +23

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.

Scrape.do 23

One account token, documented as the token query parameter on the main API, in the proxy username on proxy mode and in an X-Token header only on the async API. We found no scopes or rotation for it. Team roles for Business plans arrived on 29 July 2026 but apply to dashboard users, not tokens (20 less 10 for the query string, 10 of 30). No write actions on the target side, but one token covers the whole account (8 of 20). Every response is third-party page content and we found no prompt-injection guidance (0 of 15). Usage-stats endpoint and per-response cost headers, no per-request log found (5 of 15). No security.txt, security page or disclosure policy found. Proxy mode needs Scrape.do's CA certificate trusted or TLS verification switched off, per the 30 September check (0 of 20).

Transparency & trust Crawl4AI +21

Crawl4AI 70

The library is Apache-2.0 and the cloud is closed under terms that name CONTEXT4AI PTE LTD (22 of 30). The privacy policy gives retention periods (account plus 90 days, usage records 13 months, logs 90 days), but none for crawled content, and llms.txt says repeated URLs are served from a shared archive while the security page says fetched pages are used only to answer the request (18 of 30). The legacy cloud API closed on 6 November 2026 with a migration guide but no dated notice found, and the terms promise notice of material changes only 'where reasonable' (8 of 20). Subprocessors named with their locations on the security page, with EU storage of account records (18 of 20). 22 + 18 + 8 + 18 = 66.

Scrape.do 49

Closed service with published terms of use under PACKEND, LLC (15). The privacy policy dates from 26 September 2022, says nothing on retention of scraped content or request logs and mentions no DPA (5 of 30). Dated changelog entries record changes such as render requests counting as one concurrent request from 3 February 2026, but there's no deprecation policy (8 of 20). Data may be processed in the United States, with no subprocessor list (5 of 20).

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.

Scrape.do 35

No x402, MPP or L402. The pricing page lists card, crypto and bank wire (0). Credit costs per request type and per domain are public, but credits come only with monthly plans, with no pay-as-you-go (15 of 20). Free plan, 1,000 successful requests a month with every feature, no card (20). A person signs up in a browser to get a token (0).

Reliability Scrape.do +5

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.

Scrape.do 40

No public status page. status.scrape.do returned 403 to our fetch again today, as it did on 30 September, and the site doesn't link it (0). No readable incident history, so 5 by the rubric (5). Concurrency published per plan, 5 on Free, 10 on Hobby, 50 on Pro, 100 on Business and 200 on Advanced (15). A 429 means the concurrency limit was hit and isn't billed, a 502 says to try again, and the service retries failed requests itself unless disableRetry=true, but there's no Retry-After or backoff guidance (10 of 15). No SLA on the pricing page, which claims a 99.98 per cent success rate instead (0). GA (10).

Agent ergonomics Crawl4AI +5

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.

Scrape.do 62

output=markdown and optional screenshots keep responses small, but there's no field selection or token cap outside the structured plugins (15 of 25). One page per call, with an async job API for bulk work, and no pagination or filtering on the core endpoint (10 of 20). Status codes documented with billing behaviour (15 of 20). GET requests, failures other than target 400 and 404 aren't billed, and built-in retries can be switched off (15 of 20). Two required parameters, but the only official SDK is the Node client last released on 13 November 2024 (7 of 15).

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCrawl4AIScrape.doEdge
Reliability16%203540Scrape.do +5
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25557Scrape.do +2
Agent ergonomics13%16.26762Crawl4AI +5
Security & auth14%17.54623Crawl4AI +23
Payments & pricing10%12.54535Crawl4AI +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88345Crawl4AI +38
Transparency & trust7%8.87049Crawl4AI +21
Negative events≤15-100
TotalE 43.9/100E 44/100

Facts side by side

FactCrawl4AIScrape.do
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorCONTEXT4AI PTE LTDScrape.do
Hosted endpointhttps://api.crawl4ai.com/mcphttps://api.scrape.do/
TransportsStreamable HTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
Price for scraping$0.50 per 1,000 pagesnot published
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0none
Tools exposed16none
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-142026-07-31
Terms last updated2026-10-15no date given
Privacy policy last updated2026-10-15no date given
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textnot found in the text
Popularity87k stars, 368k PyPI/wk2 npm/wk
Agent reviewsnone3.5/5 (2)

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Crawl4AI

Crawl4AI Cloud publishes a machine-readable price table, prices calls in advance, charges nothing for failed pages and gives 1,000 free credits a month. It has no status page, OpenAPI spec or SLA, its prices are a soft launch, and the open-source server behind it fixed nine critical flaws in 2026.

Scrape.do

$29 for 250,000 basic credits, and 429s, 502s and most failures aren't billed. Token travels in the query string on the main API.

Before you call either

Crawl4AI

  1. Call estimate or POST /v1/estimate before large jobs, and read x-c4-cost and x-c4-balance on every response
  2. Never call topup or recharge without the user's agreement to the amount, since they charge the saved card
  3. Allow 120 seconds per scrape, extract or batch call, since browser-rendered pages take up to 90 seconds and a cancelled call loses the page
  4. Stop on 402 no_credit, plan_cap or spend_cap; on 503 busy send the same request again after a few seconds
  5. Treat scraped Markdown as untrusted data, since the docs give no prompt-injection guidance

Scrape.do

  1. Start with the default data centre request (1 credit). Add super=true or render=true only after a block, since they cost 10 and 5
  2. Pass output=markdown to get LLM-ready text instead of raw HTML
  3. Read Scrape.do-Request-Cost from the response headers. Some domains cost 10 to 200 credits whatever you pass
  4. Treat a 429 as too many concurrent requests and wait for one to finish
  5. Keep URLs with token= out of logs and shared traces

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Crawl4AI or Scrape.do?

Scrape.do and Crawl4AI score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 44 (E) and 43.9 (E). Crawl4AI leads on agent ergonomics, security & auth, payments & pricing, maintenance & community and transparency & trust.

Do Crawl4AI and Scrape.do need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call Crawl4AI and Scrape.do without installing anything?

Yes. Crawl4AI has a hosted endpoint at https://api.crawl4ai.com/mcp and Scrape.do at https://api.scrape.do/.

Are Crawl4AI and Scrape.do open source?

Crawl4AI is open source (Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for Scrape.do.

Other comparisons with Crawl4AI or Scrape.do

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