Head to head · Scraping · October 2026 research run

Decodo Web Data API vs ScraperAPI

Decodo Web Data API scores 61.8 (C) on agent readiness against ScraperAPI's 49.7 (D), and leads in 5 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.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 59 against 42
  • Agent ergonomics, 82 against 74
  • Security & auth, 45 against 29
  • Maintenance & community, 85 against 41
  • Transparency & trust, 62 against 54

Watch for

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

ScraperAPI D

Best for Agents that want a single GET to fetch pages through proxies, with parsed JSON for Amazon, Google, Walmart, eBay and Redfin and a batch API of up to 50,000 URLs.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

No status page is linked from the home, pricing, support or docs pages, although the pricing page lists a 99.9% uptime guarantee

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 Decodo Web Data API +44

Decodo Web Data API 85

Read for a closed service with open clients. The newest releases are MCP server 1.7.0 on 29 October 2026 and @decodo/sdk-ts 3.0.0 on 30 October (30). Since 8 August, MCP server 1.2.5 to 1.7.0 (ten versions in the official registry) and sdk-ts 2.4.0 to 3.0.0 (20). No public API changelog. Support by 24/7 live chat, email and Discord, and the MCP repository had commits by Decodo staff on most days from 6 October to 5 November. GitHub issues couldn't be read, since api.github.com refused us (10 of 25). In the official MCP registry as io.github.Decodo/mcp-server, with current SDKs in three languages (15). The MCP repository lints, builds and tests on Node 22 and 24 for every pull request (10). 30 + 20 + 10 + 15 + 10 = 85.

ScraperAPI 41

The newest dated entry is the October 2026 release note on automatic Akamai unblocking, dated by month only. Counted from its month, October lies 4 to 34 days back, so it is inside 90 days but not shown within 30, as crustdata's October entries. The skills plugin's 1.1.0 of 7 August is an untagged version bump, and the MCP server's v1.1.1 is from 17 July 2026 (20). Since 6 August only the October note and the 7 August plugin bump are dated, fewer than three (0 of 20). The npm and PyPI pages of the SDKs and CLI couldn't be read on 4 November. Monthly release notes and support through the dashboard and email. We did not read the repository's issues (8 of 15). SDKs are documented for five languages, but we could not check their release dates, and the Node.js SDK repository's last commit is from 12 January 2024 (8 of 15). The MCP repository has unit tests and a lock file but no public CI workflow (5 of 10). 20 + 0 + 8 + 8 + 5 = 41.

Reliability Decodo Web Data API +17

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.

ScraperAPI 42

No status page is linked from the home, pricing, support or docs pages we read on 9 October or 4 November (0). No readable incident history (5). Concurrency limits are published per plan, 5 threads on Free, 20 on Hobby, 50, 100, 200, 300 and 500 above it, and the local MCP server limits itself to 10 calls in 60 seconds (15). 429 is documented as a concurrency rejection with no charge, the API retries a target for up to 70 seconds before returning 500, failed requests aren't charged, and the docs tell clients to retry failed requests. That is safe-retry guidance with no idempotency keys on the async job writes and no Retry-After header (12 of 15). The pricing page lists a 99.9% uptime guarantee on every plan, but no SLA document or credit terms were found and the Terms of Use are closed to us (0 of 10). The API, async service and crawler are generally available (10). 0 + 5 + 15 + 12 + 0 + 10 = 42.

Security & auth Decodo Web Data API +16

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.

ScraperAPI 29

One API key per account, regenerated from the dashboard at most once every 24 hours. No scopes (20). The documented default puts the key in the URL query string, so less 10, although an x-sapi-api_key header and a Bearer header on the remote MCP server exist (10 of 30). No read-only or restricted keys. max_cost, a monthly pay-as-you-go spending cap and destructive hints on the two MCP delete tools limit damage (6 of 20). The API returns untrusted web content and no prompt-injection guidance was found in the docs, the MCP README or the skills (2 of 15). The dashboard has analytics with error logs, each response carries sa-credit-cost, and the privacy policy says activity logs are deleted after 7 days (9 of 15). /.well-known/security.txt returned 404 on 9 October and 4 November, and no disclosure policy, bug bounty or certification was found. The home page claims CCPA and GDPR compliance (2 of 20). 10 + 6 + 2 + 9 + 2 = 29.

Agent ergonomics Decodo Web Data API +8

Decodo Web Data API 82

The hosted MCP server lists 24 tools, with a toolsets parameter to load only web, search, ecommerce, social_media or ai, and tokenLimit caps page text at 45,000 characters by default with a truncation notice (20 of 25). Markdown output, parsing for templates, crawl limit, path filters and cursor paging, search paging, map limits and batch tasks (18 of 20). Documented status codes with a solution for each, status_code and parse_status_code in bodies, but 429 covers both the plan rate and a domain throttled for a low success rate (15 of 20). Every tool carries readOnlyHint true and destructiveHint false, server-side failures aren't billed and async results can be re-read for 24 hours. No idempotency key (16 of 20). Only url or query is required, though the default premium pool costs about twice the standard. Official Python, TypeScript and Go SDKs (13 of 15). 20 + 18 + 15 + 16 + 13 = 82.

ScraperAPI 74

28 MCP tools with no toolsets or dynamic loading (15 of 25). output_format returns Markdown or text, autoparse returns JSON on supported domains, structured endpoints page their results, and max_cost, crawl_budget and max_depth cap a job (15 of 20). Errors are HTTP status codes with plain-text messages. No machine-readable error codes (13 of 20). All 28 MCP tools carry readOnlyHint, destructiveHint, idempotentHint and openWorldHint, failed requests are not charged, and async jobs return a status URL to poll (16 of 20). Only api_key and url are required, rendering is off by default, and SDKs are documented for Python, Node.js, PHP, Ruby and Java (15). 15 + 15 + 13 + 16 + 15 = 74.

Transparency & trust Decodo Web Data API +8

Decodo Web Data API 62

Closed service under a public License Agreement naming UAB "Data troops", with MIT clients (15 of 30). The privacy policy (21 May 2026) gives retention periods by category, says Decodo is processor for scraping and doesn't log proxy traffic content, and a DPA is published. Its general two-year rule sits beside longer specific periods without saying which wins, and no retention for scraped results beyond the 24-hour async window was found (18 of 30). The migration guide says legacy APIs keep working with no end date, and the License Agreement allows discontinuing the service without notice or refunds (6 of 20). The privacy policy names Stripe, DeepL and Paddle, but no subprocessor list or data locations were found in it or the trust centre (6 of 20). 15 + 18 + 6 + 6 = 45.

ScraperAPI 54

Closed service. The MCP server and skills are MIT. Terms of Use exist at /terms/, but robots.txt disallows that path, so we could not confirm what they say (10 of 30). The privacy policy says activity logs are deleted after 7 days and account data within 60 days of a request, async results are kept up to 72 hours and DataPipeline results 30 days. The policy is undated, names Saas.group Inc. while a November 2025 release note says the service operates as ScraperAPI LLC, and no DPA was found (14 of 30). The terms and billing change was announced with effective dates of 4 November 2025 and 5 January 2026. No standing deprecation policy (8 of 20). No sub-processor list or hosting location found, only a general statement on transfers outside the EEA (3 of 20). 10 + 14 + 8 + 3 = 35.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDecodo Web Data APIScraperAPIEdge
Reliability16%205942Decodo Web Data API +17
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26767even
Agent ergonomics13%16.28274Decodo Web Data API +8
Security & auth14%17.54529Decodo Web Data API +16
Payments & pricing10%12.54040even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88541Decodo Web Data API +44
Transparency & trust7%8.86254Decodo Web Data API +8
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61.8/100D 49.7/100

Facts side by side

FactDecodo Web Data APIScraperAPI
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorDecodo (UAB "Data troops")ScraperAPI (saas.group)
Hosted endpointhttps://mcp.decodo.com/mcphttps://api.scraperapi.com
TransportsStreamable HTTP, stdioHTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
Price for scraping$0.50 per 1,000 requestsnot published
x402nono
Tools exposed3328
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registryio.github.Decodo/mcp-servernot listed
Last release2026-10-302026-08-07
Terms last updated2025-06-16couldn't be read
Privacy policy last updated2026-05-21no date given
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textcouldn't be read
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textcouldn't be read
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textcouldn't be read
Terms or service can change without noticeyescouldn't be read
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textcouldn't be read
Popularitynone5 stars

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.

ScraperAPI

One GET request with a key and a URL returns a page, and the MCP server's 28 tools carry read-only and destructive hints. No status page, OpenAPI file, security.txt or certification was found, and the documented default puts the API key in the URL query string.

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

ScraperAPI

  1. Set the client timeout to 70 seconds. The API retries for that long before it returns 500, and a request cancelled earlier is still charged
  2. Send the key as the x-sapi-api_key header to keep it out of URLs and logs
  3. Pass max_cost on each request, or call /account/urlcost first, because domain and anti-bot surcharges vary from 1 to 75 credits
  4. Use output_format=markdown or text to cut response size, and autoparse=true only on supported domains
  5. On 429 reduce concurrency to the plan limit (5 on Free, 20 on Hobby). The request is rejected, not queued

Questions

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

Decodo Web Data API scores 61.8 (C) on agent readiness against ScraperAPI's 49.7 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories.

Do Decodo Web Data API and ScraperAPI need an API key?

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

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

Yes. Decodo Web Data API has a hosted endpoint at https://mcp.decodo.com/mcp and ScraperAPI at https://api.scraperapi.com.

Other comparisons with Decodo Web Data API or ScraperAPI

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.