# fastCRW vs ScrapeGraphAI

> fastCRW and ScrapeGraphAI score within a point of each other for scraping, 64.3 and 63.6 out of 100. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapegraphai
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapegraphai.md (~4,350 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-07

fastCRW and ScrapeGraphAI score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 64.3 (B) and 63.6 (B). ScrapeGraphAI leads on payments & pricing. Both do scraping.

- fastCRW: grade B, 64.3/100, rank #478 of 1486. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/crw.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/crw.json
- ScrapeGraphAI: grade B, 63.6/100, rank #507 of 1486. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/scrapegraphai.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/scrapegraphai.json
- Best web scraping and crawling APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/web-scrapers/index.md
- All 501 scrapers comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/web-scrapers/index.md

## Which one, for what

### fastCRW (B)

Good 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:
- Agent ergonomics, 91 against 72
- Maintenance & community, 93 against 40

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine
- Free to start without a card
- Open source

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

### ScrapeGraphAI (B)

Good for: LLM pipelines that want prompt-to-JSON extraction and for agents that must pay with a wallet.

Ahead on:
- Payments & pricing, 90 against 35

Watch for: Rate limits differ between docs pages (10, 100, 500 and 5,000 a minute against 5, 30 and 100)


## Why the edge

### Payments & pricing: ScrapeGraphAI +55

- 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.
- ScrapeGraphAI (90): x402 on ScrapeGraphAI's own domain mints an account, key and credits. The protocols endpoint read on 1 November prices the packs at 4 USDC for 1,000 credits, 32 for 10,000 and 120 for 50,000 (5, 40 and 150 before), below the pricing page's $5, $40 and $150 by card, with USDC on Base for x402 and InFlow for MPP. Orthogonal's gateway at x402.orth.sh/scrapegraph takes per-call x402 on scrape, extract, search, crawl and monitor with no ScrapeGraphAI key, per the 1 October check. Per-call payment only through a third party, so 30 (30 of 40). Credit costs per operation, plans and non-expiring top-up packs are public (20). Free plan of 500 credits with no card (20). An agent can buy a key over x402 or MPP with no human signup (20). 30 + 20 + 20 + 20 = 90.

### Maintenance & community: fastCRW +53

- 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.
- ScrapeGraphAI (40): The newest changelog entry is still v3.5.0 of 30 July 2026 and the newest scrapegraph-py tag v2.3.2 of 31 July, 94 and 93 days before 1 November. scrapegraph-js has no tag after v2.0.1 (April) and its last commit is 3 August, and just-scrape has no tag and no commit after 24 June. Inside 180 days (10, 20 before, cause time). Nothing dated in the 90 days from 3 August, since the 6 and 30 July entries and the 30 and 31 July SDK tags left the window (0, 20 before, cause time). Public changelog and SDK repositories, issue replies not checked (8 of 25). Current Python SDK. The JavaScript SDK's last tag is v2.0.1 from April, with commits to 3 August (12 of 15). The Python SDK runs CI, CodeQL and dependency review (10). 10 + 0 + 8 + 12 + 10 = 40.

### Agent ergonomics: fastCRW +19

- 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.
- ScrapeGraphAI (72): 20 tools on the hosted MCP server with no tool filtering found (15 of 25). Format selection and paginated crawl pages and history (17 of 20). One error shape with type and message, 402 when credits run out (17 of 20). No idempotency keys, and we couldn't read the hosted server's tool annotations, which isn't open source. The older open-source server annotated every tool (8 of 20). Official Python and JavaScript SDKs, and a scrape needs only a URL (15). Not re-read on 1 November. 15 + 17 + 17 + 8 + 15 = 72.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | fastCRW | ScrapeGraphAI | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 50 | 49 | fastCRW +1 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 91 | 88 | fastCRW +3 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 91 | 72 | fastCRW +19 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 40 | 44 | ScrapeGraphAI +4 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 35 | 90 | ScrapeGraphAI +55 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 93 | 40 | fastCRW +53 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 60 | 61 | ScrapeGraphAI +1 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **64.3 · B** | **63.6 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | fastCRW | ScrapeGraphAI |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Nanofy OÜ | ScrapeGraphAI |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://fastcrw.com/mcp` | `https://v2-api.scrapegraphai.com` |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| Price for scraping | not published | $2 per 1,000 requests |
| x402 | no | payer tooling only |
| Licence | AGPL-3.0 | none |
| Tools exposed | 11 | 20 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.fastcrw/crw` | `io.github.ScrapeGraphAI/scrapegraph-mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-11-04 | 2026-07-31 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-04-04 | 2026-06-04 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2024-03-15 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes, with an opt-out |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 1.2k stars, 881 npm/wk | 2.4k npm/wk, 46k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (2) |

## How the scores have moved

### fastCRW

No score change since it was listed.

### ScrapeGraphAI

- -4.7 on 1 November 2026: new evidence, time
- no change on 27 October 2026: checklist
- no change on 8 October 2026: checklist

## 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.

**ScrapeGraphAI.** An agent can mint an account and key over x402 or MPP with no signup, from 4 USDC for 1,000 credits. Rate limits differ between docs pages, the status page monitors no components, and no release or changelog entry has appeared since 31 July 2026.

## 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

### ScrapeGraphAI

1. Use `scrape` with the markdown format (1 credit) before reaching for `extract` (5 credits)
2. Read `GET https://v2-api.scrapegraphai.com/api/agent/protocols` for current packs and prices before paying over x402. They differ from the card prices
3. MCP tool calls stop at 60 seconds. Use `crawl_start` and poll for anything longer
4. Back off 1, 2 then 4 seconds on a 429 `rate_limit_exceeded`. No Retry-After is sent
5. Use Orthogonal's x402 gateway when you need to pay per call without a key

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, fastCRW or ScrapeGraphAI?

fastCRW and ScrapeGraphAI score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 64.3 (B) and 63.6 (B). ScrapeGraphAI leads on payments & pricing.

### Do fastCRW and ScrapeGraphAI need an API key?

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

### Can an agent call fastCRW and ScrapeGraphAI without installing anything?

Yes. fastCRW has a hosted endpoint at https://fastcrw.com/mcp and ScrapeGraphAI at https://v2-api.scrapegraphai.com.

### Are fastCRW and ScrapeGraphAI open source?

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


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapegraphai.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapegraphai.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "crw", "b": "scrapegraphai"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare crw scrapegraphai`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/crw.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/scrapegraphai.json

## Other comparisons with fastCRW or ScrapeGraphAI

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- [Bright Data vs ScrapeGraphAI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-scrapegraphai.md)
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- [fastCRW vs ScrapingBee](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapingbee.md)
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