# Crawl4AI vs Scrape.do (slim)

> Scrape.do and Crawl4AI score within a point of each other for scraping, 44 and 43.9 out of 100. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crawl4ai-vs-scrape-do.md (~5,150 tokens) · this version ~2,630 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crawl4ai-vs-scrape-do.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crawl4ai-vs-scrape-do
- 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)

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.

- Crawl4AI: E 43.9, rank #1224 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/crawl4ai.min.md
- Scrape.do: E 44, rank #1219 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/scrape-do.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 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 Open source.
- Scrape.do, good 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 No incidents deducted, where Crawl4AI loses 10 points for them.

| Category | Crawl4AI | Scrape.do |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 35 | 40 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 55 | 57 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 67 | 62 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 46 | 23 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 45 | 35 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 83 | 45 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 70 | 49 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Crawl4AI | Scrape.do |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | CONTEXT4AI PTE LTD | Scrape.do |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.crawl4ai.com/mcp` | `https://api.scrape.do/` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | HTTP |
| Price for scraping | $0.50 per 1,000 pages | not published |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | none |
| Tools exposed | 16 | none |
| Last release | 2026-10-14 | 2026-07-31 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-10-15 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-10-15 | no date given |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 87k stars, 368k PyPI/wk | 2 npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.5/5 (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.); 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).)