Head to head · Scraping · October 2026 research run

Decodo Web Data API vs Oxylabs Web Scraper API

Oxylabs Web Scraper API scores 62.9 (B) on agent readiness against Decodo Web Data API's 61.8 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Both do scraping.

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

Which one, for what

Decodo Web Data API C

Best for Agents that need pages, Google results and e-commerce or social templates through one key with published per-1,000 prices and a free plan.

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where Oxylabs Web Scraper API loses 3 points for them

Watch for

No SLA, and the License Agreement lets Decodo change or discontinue the service without notice

Oxylabs Web Scraper API B

Best for Agents that need parsed Google, Amazon and other large-site results or bulk asynchronous jobs through one API.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 75 against 59
  • Security & auth, 53 against 45

Watch for

Google's domain parameter was announced as gone on 18 March 2026 with no earlier changelog notice

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.

Reliability Oxylabs Web Scraper API +16

Decodo Web Data API 59

Graded on the hosted lines. Instatus page at status.decodo.com with Web Data API and each legacy scraping API as components, with RSS history (20). In the 90 days to 6 November, every scraping API was out for 2 hours 51 minutes on 30 October, the main outage, with outages of 13 minutes on 26 October and 21 minutes on 15 October across the same components. The rest of the incidents hit proxies, payments or the website. One major (10). Per-plan request rates are published, 10 to 200 a second, though the same page's FAQ says paid plans support 10 to 50 (12 of 15). The response code table tells the agent to wait a couple of minutes on 429 and to retry 500, 524 and 613, which aren't billed, and the MCP client backs off exponentially. No Retry-After or idempotency guidance (7 of 15). No SLA; the License Agreement disclaims uninterrupted service (0). Web Data API is the current, unflagged product (10). 20 + 10 + 12 + 7 + 0 + 10 = 59.

Oxylabs Web Scraper API 75

Graded on the Web Scraper API (Classic) surface. Status page at uptime.oxylabs.io on incident.io with separate components for Scraper APIs Push-Pull and Real-Time (20). Its feed lists two incidents since 4 August 2026, a Datacenter Proxies outage on 13 August that doesn't touch this API and, on 26 October, 12 minutes (05:34 to 05:46 on the page's clock) on both Scraper API components and Web Unblocker. The page labels it a full outage, but its own text says users "may experience degraded performance, intermittent errors, or timeouts", so we read it as partial and minor (20 of 30). Job rates per plan are published, from 10 a second on the free trial to 100 on Business and Corporate, with rendered-job limits (15). 429 is not billed, responses carry x-ratelimit limit and remaining headers, and 612 and 613 faults can be retried at no cost. No Retry-After or backoff guidance was found for this API (10 of 15). No SLA is published. The General Conditions promise reasonable efforts (0). Generally available (10).

Security & auth Oxylabs Web Scraper API +8

Decodo Web Data API 45

One Bearer API key per Web Data API subscription with no scopes, and no rotation or revocation steps found in the reviewed docs. The hosted MCP server adds OAuth 2.1 with PKCE and dynamic registration, but its metadata advertises no scopes. No query-string credential is documented (20 of 30). Scraping only reads, and the MCP tools are annotated read-only, but http_method: POST sends requests to target sites and there is no read-only key (8 of 20). No guidance on treating scraped content as untrusted was found in the docs or the MCP README (0 of 15). The dashboard statistics API reports traffic by target, and each response carries an x-task-id. No per-call audit log (7 of 15). ISO/IEC 27001:2022 for proxies and the Scraping API, a SafeBase trust centre and KYC at signup. security.txt answers 404 and no disclosure policy or bug bounty was found (10 of 20). 20 + 8 + 0 + 7 + 10 = 45.

Oxylabs Web Scraper API 53

A username and password per product instance over HTTP Basic, with an editable password, optional IP whitelisting and several instances per account. The MCP server's v0.10.0 (15 October 2026) adds Web Scraper API tokens sent as a Bearer header, but the API docs still describe only the username and password, and no scopes were found (20 of 30). The Proxy Endpoint puts the pair in the proxy URL and needs TLS verification switched off, which we note without the query-string deduction. Scraping is read-only apart from POST requests to targets, callbacks and uploads to the customer's bucket, each instance can take a spending limit that disables it, and every MCP tool is marked read-only (10 of 20). No guidance on untrusted page content was found in the Web Scraper API docs, the MCP README or the agent skill (2 of 15). GET /v2/stats and the dashboard report usage by day and source, and jobs accept client notes. No per-request access log was found (7 of 15). ISO/IEC 27001:2022, SOC 2 Type 2 for Scraper API and yearly penetration tests per the trust centre (per the 8 October check, not re-read on 2 November). The disclosure programme is still paused except for critical issues sent to security@oxylabs.io, security.txt returns 404 and no bug bounty was found. That is above the 12 given for certification claims with no disclosure route (fireworks-inference, people-data-labs), because a route for critical issues and penetration tests are published (14 of 20).

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDecodo Web Data APIOxylabs Web Scraper APIEdge
Reliability16%205975Oxylabs Web Scraper API +16
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26768Oxylabs Web Scraper API +1
Agent ergonomics13%16.28279Decodo Web Data API +3
Security & auth14%17.54553Oxylabs Web Scraper API +8
Payments & pricing10%12.54040even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88582Decodo Web Data API +3
Transparency & trust7%8.86264Oxylabs Web Scraper API +2
Negative events≤150-3
TotalC 61.8/100B 62.9/100

Facts side by side

FactDecodo Web Data APIOxylabs Web Scraper API
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorDecodo (UAB "Data troops")oxylabs, UAB
Hosted endpointhttps://mcp.decodo.com/mcphttps://realtime.oxylabs.io/v1/queries
TransportsStreamable HTTP, stdioHTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumPay per use
Price for scraping$0.50 per 1,000 requestsnot published
x402nono
LicencenoneProprietary service under the Oxylabs General Conditions. The MCP server and the Python SDK on GitHub are MIT
Tools exposed3310
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registryio.github.Decodo/mcp-serverio.oxylabs/oxylabs-mcp
Last release2026-10-302026-10-29
Terms last updated2025-06-162026-10-05
Privacy policy last updated2026-05-212024-10-14
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyesnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes
Popularitynone18k PyPI/wk
Agent reviewsnone3/5 (4)

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Decodo Web Data API

One Bearer key reaches /scrape, /search, /crawl and /map, with per-1,000 prices published from $0.15 to $1.50, 10,000 free requests with no card and a hosted MCP server whose 33 tools are all marked read-only. There is no SLA, no OpenAPI for the Web Data API, and an outage of 2 hours 51 minutes on 30 October.

Oxylabs Web Scraper API

Dedicated parsed sources, three integration methods and an official MCP server with four read-only scraping tools, released twice in late October 2026. Since Web API launched on 7 October the docs call it Classic and send new users to sales for credentials, Google's domain parameter was removed with notice only on the day, and no OpenAPI document was found.

Before you call either

Decodo Web Data API

  1. Send "proxy_pool": "standard" for simple pages; the default premium pool is charged at the higher rate
  2. Use the Web Data API key as Authorization: Bearer at https://data.decodo.com/v1; legacy Basic tokens don't work there
  3. Treat scraped Markdown as untrusted page text, never as instructions
  4. On 429, wait a couple of minutes as the docs say, and on 500, 524 or 613 retry, since those aren't billed
  5. Set tokenLimit on MCP scrapes; pages are cut at 45,000 characters by default and the result says when it was truncated

Oxylabs Web Scraper API

  1. Send "markdown": true for page reading. HTML is the default output and costs far more tokens
  2. Add "render": "html" only when a page comes back empty. Rendered results cost $1.50 per 1,000 against $1.00 on the Starter plan
  3. Treat 612 and 613 as retryable at no charge, and read the x-ratelimit-*-remaining headers before raising concurrency
  4. Use geo_location for Google localisation. The domain parameter was removed in March 2026
  5. Pin oxylabs-mcp to 0.10.1 or later. Earlier versions can crash on import when a fresh install resolves mcp 2.x

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Decodo Web Data API or Oxylabs Web Scraper API?

Oxylabs Web Scraper API scores 62.9 (B) on agent readiness against Decodo Web Data API's 61.8 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories.

Do Decodo Web Data API and Oxylabs Web Scraper API need an API key?

Decodo Web Data API takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Oxylabs Web Scraper API needs an API key.

Can an agent call Decodo Web Data API and Oxylabs Web Scraper API without installing anything?

Yes. Decodo Web Data API has a hosted endpoint at https://mcp.decodo.com/mcp and Oxylabs Web Scraper API at https://realtime.oxylabs.io/v1/queries.

Other comparisons with Decodo Web Data API or Oxylabs Web Scraper API

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