# Crawl4AI vs Scrapeless (slim)

> Scrapeless scores 55.9 (C) 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-scrapeless.md (~5,600 tokens) · this version ~2,930 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crawl4ai-vs-scrapeless.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crawl4ai-vs-scrapeless
- 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)

Scrapeless scores 55.9 (C) on agent readiness against Crawl4AI's 43.9 (E), and leads in 2 of 7 scored categories. Crawl4AI leads on agent ergonomics, security & auth, payments & pricing and transparency & trust. Both do scraping.

- Crawl4AI: E 43.9, rank #1224 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/crawl4ai.min.md
- Scrapeless: C 55.9, rank #847 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/scrapeless.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 50; Security & auth, 46 against 37; Payments & pricing, 45 against 35; Transparency & trust, 70 against 58. Also Open source.
- Scrapeless, good for An agent that needs one key for unlocking, a remote browser and AI answer-engine scraping. Ahead on Reliability, 70 against 35; Schema & documentation, 66 against 55. Also Runs on your own machine; No incidents deducted, where Crawl4AI loses 10 points for them.

| Category | Crawl4AI | Scrapeless |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 35 | 70 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 55 | 66 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 67 | 50 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 46 | 37 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 45 | 35 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 83 | 81 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 70 | 58 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Crawl4AI | Scrapeless |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | CONTEXT4AI PTE LTD | Scrapeless (NST Labs Tech) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.crawl4ai.com/mcp` | `https://api.scrapeless.com` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| Price for scraping | $0.50 per 1,000 pages | not published |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Tools exposed | 16 | 25 |
| MCP registry | not listed | `io.github.scrapeless-ai/scrapeless-mcp-server` |
| Last release | 2026-10-14 | 2026-09-16 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-10-15 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-10-15 | no date given |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 87k stars, 368k PyPI/wk | 169 stars, 423 npm/wk, 216 PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 2/5 (2) |

Why the edge:
- Reliability, Scrapeless +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.); Scrapeless 70 (Better Stack status page at status.scrapeless.com with four groups, Scrapeless API, Scraping Browser, website and dashboard, and residential proxies (20). Every monitor shows 100 per cent uptime over 90 days and the incident list reports none for September, October or November 2026. The list doesn't page back to August, so the earlier clean reading for August is kept (30). No rate-limit numbers found in the docs. The 30 September concurrency figures came from a script-loaded price file and are struck (0). The Results and Polling page documents 429 as rate limit exceeded with reduce-frequency guidance and a one-minute wait for 500s, with no idempotency keys (10). The pricing page names an Enterprise-level SLA but no SLA document is published (0). The APIs are generally available (10). 20 + 30 + 0 + 10 + 0 + 10 = 70.)
- Agent ergonomics, Crawl4AI +17: 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.); Scrapeless 50 (25 MCP tools, 16 of them browser actions, with no toolsets or read-only subset (15 of 25). crawl_start takes limit and maxDepth, but scrape_markdown and scrape_html take only a URL, with no size or selector control (10 of 20). The MCP returns status_code, a code of rate_limited or api_error, and the upstream message. No API error catalogue found (10 of 20). No readOnlyHint or destructiveHint annotations and no idempotency guidance (0). Most tools need only a URL, and official SDKs exist for Node and Python (15).)
- Transparency & trust, Crawl4AI +12: 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.); Scrapeless 58 (The MCP server is open source but the LICENSE file says MIT while package.json says ISC. The API is closed, and the terms name NST LABS TECH LTD. with no address or governing law (15 of 30). The privacy policy gives no retention periods beyond tokens kept 24 hours. The Data Processing Agreement (v1.0, effective 7 August 2026, linked from the terms) covers sub-processor notice, SCCs for EEA transfers and deletion on termination, with no retention periods for scraped data (14 of 30). No deprecation policy or dated notices found (0). The DPA's Exhibit 2 names two sub-processors, Airwallex and Intercom, both in the United States, and no hosting location (10 of 20). 15 + 14 + 0 + 10 = 39.)
- Schema & documentation, Scrapeless +11: 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.); Scrapeless 66 (No OpenAPI spec found. The API reference at apidocs.scrapeless.com lists about 30 schema definitions in its llms.txt, and the 25 MCP tools have typed zod inputs, one of which (crawl_start scrapeOptions) takes a free-form record (15 of 25). llms.txt with Markdown pages for every endpoint (10). MCP descriptions carry Restrictions, Valid and Invalid lines for most tools, though google_search's description is a run-on fragment (15 of 20). Inputs are typed with URL validation and some enums, plus the one free-form record (11 of 15). Request examples on each reference page, but no documented error responses or error code list found (7 of 15). Versioned API paths (v1, v2) and a CHANGELOG.md in the MCP repo, but no product changelog (8 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.); Scrapeless 35 (No x402, MPP or L402. Crypto top-ups exist but aren't a machine payment protocol (0). The pricing page draws its rate tables by script. The docs publish per-unit rates, Crawl from $1.8 a GB plus $0.09 a browser hour and Web Unlocker from $0.20 per 1,000 URLs, and the Google Search API page gives volume rates below $0.50 per 1,000 on qualifying plans, but no full rate card is readable without script (15 of 20, a partial kept under the in-between rule). The Google Search API page says no credit card is required to start (20). A person signs up in a browser (0). 0 + 15 + 20 + 0 = 35.)
- Security & auth, Crawl4AI +9: 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.); Scrapeless 37 (One API token per account, sent in the x-api-token header, which the docs say can be replaced and invalidated from the dashboard or through support. No scopes (20). Agent Browser WebSocket connections pass the token as a URL parameter, a documented option, so less 10 (10 of 30). No read-only mode, and the browser tools can click and type on third-party sites without any confirmation step (5 of 20). The MCP README has a security section that calls web data untrusted by default and warns against passing raw scraped content into prompts, with no in-tool mitigation (10 of 15). Browser sessions are recorded, and we found no request log for the other APIs (5 of 15). security.txt is valid (contact system@scrapeless.com, expires 2030), with no disclosure policy or acknowledgement time, and no bug bounty, SOC 2 or ISO 27001 found (7 of 20). 10 + 5 + 10 + 5 + 7 = 37.)