Head to head · Extraction · October 2026 research run

fastCRW vs ScrapeAtlas

fastCRW scores 64.3 (B) on agent readiness against ScrapeAtlas's 62.8 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. ScrapeAtlas leads on security & auth and payments & pricing. Both do extraction.

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

Which one, for what

fastCRW B

Best for Agents that want Firecrawl-style scrape, crawl, map, search and extract at lower per-page cost, or a small self-hosted engine.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 50 against 42
  • Agent ergonomics, 91 against 76
  • Maintenance & community, 93 against 70

Also in its favour

  • Runs on your own machine
  • Open source

Watch for

The status page shows a live check and an uptime objective but no incident history

ScrapeAtlas B

Best for Agents that need structured public data from a named social, video, forum, marketplace or prediction-market platform, such as a creator's profile and recent posts, a thread's comments, a product's reviews or a market's order book, paid per successful request without a subscription.

Ahead on

  • Security & auth, 55 against 40
  • Payments & pricing, 55 against 35

Watch for

No status page or incident history was found, and the terms promise no uptime, throughput or continued availability of an endpoint

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 fastCRW +23

fastCRW 93

v0.41.0 on 4 November 2026, matching the registry and npm (30). 16 dated releases in the 90 days from 8 August, from 0.37.0 to 0.41.0 (20). Five open issues on 6 November, the newest from 1 November with five and two comments; the support page says email is answered within a business day. Reply authors weren't read (18 of 25). In the official MCP registry as io.github.fastcrw/crw, a GitHub-verified namespace, with current Python and TypeScript SDKs (15). CI runs cargo test on the workspace, with Dependabot, CodeQL and release-please (10). 30 + 20 + 18 + 15 + 10 = 93.

ScrapeAtlas 70

The newest change is CLI 0.26.0 on 28 October 2026 per the 30 October npm reading, not re-read on 2 November, after the StockX endpoints on 27 October, still the changelog's newest entry on 2 November (30). 15 dated release days between 21 September and 27 October, 58 updates (20). Closed service with a public changelog. Support in the dashboard is for customers with a credit purchase, the contact form takes buying questions and privacy requests, and no Discord, forum or issue tracker was found; the careers page lists a customer support role (7 of 15). io.github.OnlineDopamine/scrapeatlas is in the official MCP registry under a GitHub-verified personal namespace, at 1.0.0 since 5 October and describing about 40 platforms against 49 now. The CLI is current on npm and an n8n node exists, but there are no SDKs (10 of 15). The CLI package has no repository field, no public source and no visible CI; it needs Node 22 or newer (3 of 10). 30+20+7+10+3 = 70.

Payments & pricing ScrapeAtlas +20

fastCRW 35

No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Plans are public with credit costs per operation and top-up prices per block of credits, $9 per 1,000 on Hobby down to $299 per 500,000 on Scale, but top-ups need a plan, so between plan-only and per-unit (15 of 20). 500 one-off credits with no card, plus up to 500 from onboarding tasks (20). Hosted keys need a person to sign up in a browser; the free self-hosted engine runs with no account but isn't the graded surface (0). 0 + 15 + 20 + 0 = 35.

ScrapeAtlas 55

No x402, MPP or L402 on ScrapeAtlas's own endpoints. The vendor's eight Actors on the Apify Store, covering TikTok, Instagram, Meetup and Couchsurfing at $1.98 per 1,000 successful requests, can be paid through Apify, whose prepaid token is sold over x402, so partial credit for a third-party route on part of the catalogue (10 of 40). Per-unit prices are on the home page without a login, 1 credit per successful request and packs at $1.90, $1.78 and $1.25 per 1,000, with the 2-credit endpoints named (20). 100 free credits at signup, no card (20). A person signs up in a browser and creates a key; the Apify route reaches four platforms without a ScrapeAtlas account (5 of 20). 10+20+20+5 = 55.

Agent ergonomics fastCRW +15

fastCRW 91

11 compact MCP tools, two of them the data-source tools added in 0.41.0. Content is capped near 15,000 characters with truncated: true and a resume offset, and map returns at most 100 URLs by default (20 of 25). Formats, main-content filtering, include and exclude selectors, maxLength, startIndex, limit and crawl depth and page caps (20). Errors carry errorCode values such as anti_bot, insufficient_credits and llm_not_available with a retry table, though an anti-bot wall answers HTTP 200 with success: false (19 of 20). Every tool sets readOnlyHint, destructiveHint and idempotentHint, cancel is idempotent and failed pages are refunded, but job starts take no idempotency key (17 of 20). Only url is required, with official Python and TypeScript SDKs (15). 20 + 20 + 19 + 17 + 15 = 91.

ScrapeAtlas 76

API reading. Responses are bounded by limit on 93 operations, by per-body caps, by format on 19 and view on 14 operations, and by since and until on about 60; Instagram and Twitch have reduced basic-profile endpoints. No field selection was found. The MCP server loads 373 tool definitions with no documented subset, which on the MCP reading would score 5 (15 of 25). Cursor pagination on 130 operations, sort on 28, date windows, and coverage.order reported on every list since 2 October 2026 (20). One failure object with code and message, a requestId on every response, retryable codes named, and an HTTP status table (19 of 20). All data reads are GET, failed requests aren't charged, and the docs say which codes to retry; no idempotency key on the 12 POST batch reads and MCP annotations weren't read (14 of 20). Median one required parameter and defaults on limits, but no official SDK in any language. The npm CLI, the n8n node and six-language samples stand in (8 of 15). 15+20+19+14+8 = 76.

Security & auth ScrapeAtlas +15

fastCRW 40

The hosted MCP server publishes RFC 9728 metadata naming its own authorisation server, with PKCE S256, dynamic client registration and one scope, mcp:tools, and the API takes revocable Bearer keys from the dashboard. No key scopes or second scope found (22). The authentication page documents fastcrw.com/mcp/<API_KEY> as a way in, a key in the URL path, so less 10 (12 of 30). Tools mostly read, and data-source calls check approvals, but there is no read-only key or confirmation step for monitors (8 of 20). Managed LLM extraction, summaries and answers wrap scraped text in a nonce fence (crates/crw-extract/src/untrusted.rs), and the hardening guide treats pages as untrusted, but the MCP docs give agents no guidance on scraped content (7 of 15). Each response reports creditsUsed; no per-call log in the docs (5 of 15). SECURITY.md names security@fastcrw.com and GitHub private reporting with a 48-hour acknowledgement, and CI runs CodeQL and OpenSSF Scorecard. security.txt answers 404, and no bounty or certification found (8 of 20). 12 + 8 + 7 + 5 + 8 = 40.

ScrapeAtlas 55

Customer keys with prefix sa_live_, several per account, each with an expiry date, revoked within 60 seconds and stored as hashes per the privacy policy, and keys can't start a checkout or create keys. No scopes or per-platform keys. The MCP server adds an authorization-code flow with PKCE S256, dynamic client registration, refresh-token rotation and revocation, but a single scope, scrapeatlas. No documented option to send a secret in a query string, and the MCP page says never to put the key in a prompt, argument or URL (22 of 30). The whole surface is read-only retrieval of public pages with no destructive action, and an OAuth grant covers retrieval plus the account's usage records only; nothing restricts a key to some platforms (16 of 20). Every response is third-party page content, and the only guidance found concerns keeping secrets out of tool arguments, nothing on treating returned text as untrusted (2 of 15). GET /v1/activity returns per-request metadata (endpoint, time, status, duration) newest first with filters, GET /v1/usage daily totals, responses carry x-credits-charged and x-credits-remaining, and the dashboard shows a credit history (13 of 15). No security.txt (404), no disclosure policy, bug bounty, SOC 2 or ISO 27001; the privacy policy describes access controls and incident notices and gives an abuse address (2 of 20). 22+16+2+13+2 = 55.

Reliability fastCRW +8

fastCRW 50

Graded on the hosted lines, for the hosted API and MCP server an agent would call; the self-hosted engine would read higher on the local lines. fastcrw.com/status is a first-party page with a live health check and a 99.9% monthly uptime objective, but no components with history (10 of 20). It lists no incidents and keeps no history we could read (5). Concurrency per plan is published, 3 on Free to 150 on Scale, while the request-rate guard above it is deliberately unpublished (12 of 15). The rate-limits page documents Retry-After and X-RateLimit headers, gives exponential backoff code, and separates 429 (retry) from 402 (stop). No idempotency keys for crawl, extract or monitor starts (13 of 15). Pricing mentions an SLA only as 'Premier + SLA' on Enterprise, with no terms, and the terms promise no uptime (0). The hosted service is sold on paid plans with no beta label, though the engine is at 0.41.0 (10). 10 + 5 + 12 + 13 + 0 + 10 = 50.

ScrapeAtlas 42

Hosted reading, for the REST API with the MCP server described. No public status page was found. https://scrapeatlas.com/status/ answers 404 and neither the docs nor the footer links one (0). No readable incident history, so 5 by the rubric (5). Limits are published with numbers on the authentication page, 120 requests a minute and 4 concurrent requests per account, with per-worker deadlines and byte caps on the platform pages (15). A 429 is documented for account and upstream limits with a retry-after to respect, 503 busy for full capacity, and the responses page says to retry only on upstream_rate_limited, timeout or busy. No Retry-After header is declared in the OpenAPI file and the CLI does no automatic retries. Writes don't exist, the 12 POST operations are batch reads, so idempotency keys aren't needed (12 of 15). No SLA. The terms (29 September 2026) say no particular uptime, throughput or continued availability is promised unless a separate signed agreement says otherwise (0). The API is sold and listed as available on every platform page, with 15 of 386 operations saying preview in their descriptions; the MCP server is labelled Preview and scored under the API (10). 0+5+15+12+0+10 = 42.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runfastCRWScrapeAtlasEdge
Reliability16%205042fastCRW +8
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.29188fastCRW +3
Agent ergonomics13%16.29176fastCRW +15
Security & auth14%17.54055ScrapeAtlas +15
Payments & pricing10%12.53555ScrapeAtlas +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.89370fastCRW +23
Transparency & trust7%8.86059fastCRW +1
Negative events≤1500
TotalB 64.3/100B 62.8/100

Facts side by side

FactfastCRWScrapeAtlas
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorNanofy OÜOD. Media & Technology LLC
Hosted endpointhttps://fastcrw.com/mcphttps://api.scrapeatlas.com
Transportsstdio, Streamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumPay per use
x402nono
LicenceAGPL-3.0Proprietary service under ScrapeAtlas's Terms of Service. The @scrapeatlas/cli package on npm is MIT with no public source repository
Tools exposed11373
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registryio.github.fastcrw/crwio.github.OnlineDopamine/scrapeatlas
Last release2026-11-042026-10-28
Terms last updated2026-04-042026-09-29
Privacy policy last updatedno date given2026-10-19
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyesnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textnot found in the text
Popularity1.2k stars, 881 npm/wknone

How the scores have moved

fastCRW

No score change since it was listed.

ScrapeAtlas

Verdicts

fastCRW

Agents get 11 compact, annotated MCP tools with bounded output, a public OpenAPI spec, refunds on failed pages and a free self-hosted engine. The hosted service has no status history, publishes no SLA terms, names its operator only on the support page, and documents an MCP address with the API key in the URL path.

ScrapeAtlas

An OpenAPI 3.1 file with 386 operations, typed parameters and a uniform failure object, published limits of 120 requests a minute and 4 concurrent, and 1 credit per successful request with failed calls free. No status page, security.txt or SDKs, the MCP server is a preview with 373 tools, and the product is six weeks old.

Before you call either

fastCRW

  1. Connect to https://fastcrw.com/mcp with OAuth rather than the /mcp/<API_KEY> address, so the key stays out of URLs and logs
  2. Branch on errorCode. Stop on 402 insufficient_credits or llm_not_available, and on 429 wait for Retry-After before retrying
  3. Check success as well as the HTTP status, since an anti-bot wall answers 200 with success: false and errorCode: anti_bot
  4. Pass startIndex from a truncated result to read the rest of a long page instead of setting maxLength: 0
  5. Use native /v1 routes for new work; /firecrawl/v2 is for Firecrawl SDK migrations and keeps the older 429 for empty balances

ScrapeAtlas

  1. Send the key as x-api-key on https://api.scrapeatlas.com and check status on every HTTP 200; partial is usable data with coverage.warnings, failed and challenged carry failure.code.
  2. Retry only on upstream_rate_limited, timeout and busy, after the retry-after on a 429. Stay under 120 requests a minute and 4 concurrent per account.
  3. Pass the returned cursor back unchanged for the next page, and use since and until (ISO 8601 or Unix seconds) where listed; each page costs another credit.
  4. Each platform has its own response schema, so read the endpoint's response fields before mapping; unknown values are null, never 0.
  5. For MCP, connect to https://api.scrapeatlas.com/mcp over Streamable HTTP with Authorization: Bearer and expect 373 tools; the two account tools and failed calls cost 0 credits.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, fastCRW or ScrapeAtlas?

fastCRW scores 64.3 (B) on agent readiness against ScrapeAtlas's 62.8 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. ScrapeAtlas leads on security & auth and payments & pricing.

Do fastCRW and ScrapeAtlas need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call fastCRW and ScrapeAtlas without installing anything?

Yes. fastCRW has a hosted endpoint at https://fastcrw.com/mcp and ScrapeAtlas at https://api.scrapeatlas.com.

Are fastCRW and ScrapeAtlas open source?

fastCRW is open source (AGPL-3.0). No open-source release is listed for ScrapeAtlas.

Other comparisons with fastCRW or ScrapeAtlas

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.