# fastCRW vs Spider

> Spider scores 74.6 (BB) to fastCRW's 64.3 (B) for scraping. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-spider-cloud
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-spider-cloud.md (~5,550 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

Spider scores 74.6 (BB) on agent readiness against fastCRW's 64.3 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. fastCRW leads on agent ergonomics and maintenance & community. Both do scraping. Spider accepts x402. fastCRW doesn't.

- 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
- Spider: grade BB, 74.6/100, rank #78 of 1486. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/spider-cloud.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/spider-cloud.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 70
- Maintenance & community, 93 against 75

Also in its favour:
- Free to start without a card

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

### Spider (BB)

Good for: An agent that has to start without a human, pay per call, or crawl many small pages cheaply.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 85 against 50
- Payments & pricing, 96 against 35
- Transparency & trust, 70 against 60

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- An agent can pay per call over x402, with no account

Watch for: No security.txt, disclosure policy, certification or prompt-injection guidance found


## Why the edge

### Payments & pricing: Spider +61

- 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.
- Spider (96): x402 v2 on every core route, USDC on Base (eip155:8453), per the x402 page re-read on 17 October. Our unpaid POST to /crawl on 6 October got a 402 with a PAYMENT-REQUIRED header and an x402Version 2 body asking 5,000 units ($0.005), not re-run on 17 October because api.spider.cloud's robots.txt disallows every path (40). Bytes, CPU minutes and credit prices are public (20). Keyless POST /scrape, documented in llms.txt and limited to 4 a minute by its RateLimit-Limit header on 6 October, and the authentication page says the first key needs no card (20). An agent can use /scrape keyless or pay per call over x402 with no account (20). 100 less 4 because AI Studio routes need a plan from $6 a month.

### Reliability: Spider +35

- 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.
- Spider (85): Statuspage at spidercloud.statuspage.io with API and HTTP Proxy components (20). The history feed, re-read on 1 November (robots.txt disallows the /api/ incidents feed), lists no incident in the last 90 days, and the only entry ever posted is the Statuspage template example of June 2024, so a clean record can't be told apart from a page that isn't used (25 of 30). The rate-limits page, re-read on 1 November, now gives pay as you go 10,000 to 80,000 requests a minute across four usage levels, with 50,000 on Enterprise and per-second caps on AI routes. Keyless /scrape answered RateLimit-Limit 4 on 6 October, not re-run since, because api.spider.cloud's robots.txt disallows every path (15). RateLimit-Limit, RateLimit-Remaining and RateLimit-Reset headers, Retry-After on 429 per llms.txt, and an exponential backoff example on the rate-limits page (15). No SLA found (0). Generally available (10). 20 + 25 + 15 + 15 + 0 + 10 = 85.

### Agent ergonomics: fastCRW +21

- 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.
- Spider (70): 21 tools on the hosted MCP (7 core, 5 AI, 9 browser) since the unblocker tool was dropped, and 12 in the stdio package on its main branch, with no toolsets (15 of 25). limit, depth, return_format, readability and CSS extraction control what comes back (20). Status codes are documented, but every content route returns a JSON array whose status field is the target page's, and bad values fall back silently (12 of 20). No tool annotations, and llms.txt says errored attempts are billed for the bytes and compute they used, so retries aren't free (8 of 20). request defaults to smart and only url is required. Official clients in Python, JavaScript, Rust and Go plus a CLI (15).

### Maintenance & community: fastCRW +18

- 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.
- Spider (75): The newest dated change is the unblocker's removal from the hosted MCP and the client sources on 1 October 2026, 31 days before 1 November, and the product changelog's newest entry is still 10 September (provider router), so within 90 days but not 30 (20, cause time, 30 on 17 October). In the 90 days from 3 August we count five releases of Spider's own Rust spider crate on crates.io (2.53.5 on 17 August, 2.53.6 on 18 August, 2.53.7 on 1 September, 2.53.8 on 3 September and 2.53.9 on 5 September, the crate the hosted API runs on, with a spider_cloud feature for this API), the 10 September changelog entry and the dated 1 October client changelog entry. The @spider-cloud/spider-client 0.2.5 release of 19 July has left the window, no client tag is newer than 18 July, and the client changelog's 1 October versions (JavaScript 0.3.0, Python 0.2.0) have no release tags in the repository on 1 November. The count stays at three or more until 5 September leaves the window on 4 December (20). We couldn't read GitHub issues. Dated changelog and support by email (12 of 25). In the official MCP registry as cloud.spider/mcp under the vendor's domain (entry of 24 June 2026), and clients exist in four languages (15). The clients repo runs CI for Node, Python and Rust. The MCP repo has no CI (8 of 10). 20 + 20 + 12 + 15 + 8 = 75.

### Transparency & trust: Spider +10

- fastCRW (60): The engine and MCP server are AGPL-3.0 and the SDKs MIT, while the hosted control plane is closed under terms that name no legal entity (25 of 30). The terms say crawled data is handled transiently with zero data retention for approved accounts, but the privacy policy is undated, names no controller, gives no retention periods and mentions no DPA (10 of 30). The CHANGELOG flags breaking changes, deprecated v2 extract routes return a warning on every response, and the October 2026 402 change is dated in the docs, with no standing notice policy (10 of 20). Local data-source telemetry is disclosed with an opt-out. The privacy policy names Stripe, Google Analytics, Google Ads and an X pixel, but infrastructure and search providers are unnamed and no data location is given (8 of 20). 25 + 10 + 10 + 8 = 53.
- Spider (70): The spider crawler and the clients and MCP are MIT. The hosted API is closed, run by BAGELMEN LLC under the EULA (25 of 30). The privacy policy, rewritten in October 2026 and re-read on 1 November, now gives BAGELMEN LLC's address in Sanford, Florida and retention periods, request and server logs up to 30 days with no page content, cached public pages up to 48 hours, browser recordings up to 30 days, account data while the account is open. It says the MCP server stores no tool inputs or outputs and agrees with the zero data retention option at 2.5 times credits. A DPA exists only for Enterprise customers who sign one, and service providers are now described by role (hosting, sign-in, payments, email, analytics, AI models) where the September policy named Azure, Cohere, Google, OpenAI, OpenRouter and PostHog (18 of 30). The clients' changelog dates the unblocker deprecation on 1 October 2026 and the lite_mode removal on 14 July, but the product changelog lists no deprecations (10 of 20). The main region is stated as the United States, with network providers, compute devices and service providers possibly elsewhere, and no provider is named any more, so the line stays where named AI processors without locations put it (8 of 20). 25 + 18 + 10 + 8 = 61.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | fastCRW | Spider | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 50 | 85 | Spider +35 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 91 | 87 | fastCRW +4 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 91 | 70 | fastCRW +21 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 40 | 42 | Spider +2 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 35 | 96 | Spider +61 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 93 | 75 | fastCRW +18 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 60 | 70 | Spider +10 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **64.3 · B** | **74.6 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | fastCRW | Spider |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Nanofy OÜ | Spider (BAGELMEN LLC) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://fastcrw.com/mcp` | `https://api.spider.cloud` |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| Price for scraping | not published | $0.50 per 1,000 requests |
| x402 | no | yes, from $0.0005/call |
| Licence | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Tools exposed | 11 | 21 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.fastcrw/crw` | `cloud.spider/mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-11-04 | 2026-09-05 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-04-04 | 2026-09-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2026-10-01 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| 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 | 2.7k stars, 2.7k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.3/5 (8) |

## How the scores have moved

### fastCRW

No score change since it was listed.

### Spider

- -0.8 on 1 November 2026: time
- +0.1 on 27 October 2026: checklist
- +1.2 on 17 October 2026: terms, new evidence

## 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.

**Spider.** Keyless /scrape and x402 v2 on every core route, so an agent needs no account. Operated by BAGELMEN LLC with no security.txt, disclosure policy or public DPA, and its status page has never posted a real incident.

## 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

### Spider

1. Every content route returns a JSON array, even /scrape. The status field is the page's, not the API call's
2. Leave request on smart and set return_format to markdown for LLM input
3. Set limit on /crawl. Unset, it caps only at your credit balance
4. Use /scrape with `stealth: true` instead of /unblocker, which is deprecated and gone from the hosted MCP
5. Honour Retry-After on 429. Keyless use allows 4 requests a minute

## Tutorials

- [Save a page as Markdown with Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/tutorials/spider-cloud/), for Spider

## Questions

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

Spider scores 74.6 (BB) on agent readiness against fastCRW's 64.3 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. fastCRW leads on agent ergonomics and maintenance & community.

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

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in. An agent can also pay Spider per call over x402, with no account.

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

Yes. fastCRW has a hosted endpoint at https://fastcrw.com/mcp and Spider at https://api.spider.cloud.

### Are fastCRW and Spider open source?

Yes. fastCRW is open source (AGPL-3.0). Spider is open source (MIT).


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with fastCRW or Spider

- [Bright Data vs fastCRW](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-crw.md)
- [Bright Data vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [BrowserAct vs fastCRW](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browseract-vs-crw.md)
- [BrowserAct vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browseract-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Context.dev vs fastCRW](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/context-dev-vs-crw.md)
- [Context.dev vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/context-dev-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Crawl4AI vs fastCRW](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crawl4ai-vs-crw.md)
- [Crawl4AI vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crawl4ai-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [fastCRW vs Decodo Web Data API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-decodo.md)
- [fastCRW vs Diffbot](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-diffbot.md)
- [fastCRW vs jevcrawl](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-jevcrawl.md)
- [fastCRW vs Jina Reader](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-jina-reader.md)
- [fastCRW vs Microlink](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-microlink.md)
- [fastCRW vs Olostep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-olostep.md)
- [fastCRW vs Outcrawl](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-outcrawl.md)
- [fastCRW vs Oxylabs Web Scraper API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-oxylabs-web-scraper.md)
- [fastCRW vs Scrape.do](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrape-do.md)
- [fastCRW vs ScrapeGraphAI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapegraphai.md)
- [fastCRW vs Scrapeless](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapeless.md)
- [fastCRW vs ScrapeOps Proxy API Aggregator](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapeops.md)
- [fastCRW vs ScraperAPI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scraperapi.md)
- [fastCRW vs Scrapewise](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapewise.md)
- [fastCRW vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapfly.md)
- [fastCRW vs ScrapingAnt](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapingant.md)
- [fastCRW vs ScrapingBee](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapingbee.md)
- [fastCRW vs Scrapingdog](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapingdog.md)
- [fastCRW vs WebScraping.AI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-webscraping-ai.md)
- [fastCRW vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-zenrows.md)
- [fastCRW vs Zyte API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-zyte.md)
- [Decodo Web Data API vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/decodo-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Jina Reader vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jina-reader-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Microlink vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/microlink-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Olostep vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Outcrawl vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/outcrawl-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Oxylabs Web Scraper API vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/oxylabs-web-scraper-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Scrape.do vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrape-do-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [ScrapeGraphAI vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapegraphai-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Scrapeless vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeless-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [ScraperAPI vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scraperapi-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Scrapewise vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapewise-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Scrapfly vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapfly-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [ScrapingAnt vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapingant-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [ScrapingBee vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapingbee-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Scrapingdog vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapingdog-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Spider vs WebScraping.AI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/spider-cloud-vs-webscraping-ai.md)
- [Spider vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/spider-cloud-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Spider vs Zyte API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/spider-cloud-vs-zyte.md)
- [fastCRW vs Firecrawl MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-firecrawl-mcp.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [fastCRW vs Qovia](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-qovia.md)
- [fastCRW vs ScrapeAtlas](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapeatlas.md)
- [fastCRW vs SoldFetch](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-soldfetch.md)
- [Diffbot vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Qovia vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [ScrapeAtlas vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [SoldFetch vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/soldfetch-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Apify MCP Server vs fastCRW](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apify-mcp-vs-crw.md)
- [Apify MCP Server vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apify-mcp-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [jevcrawl vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [ScrapeOps Proxy API Aggregator vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeops-vs-spider-cloud.md)

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Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp