# Diffbot vs jevcrawl

> jevcrawl scores 63.7 (B) to Diffbot's 54.3 (C) for extraction. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-jevcrawl
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-jevcrawl.md (~2,750 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-jevcrawl.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-jevcrawl.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit required: when you show, quote or pass on anything from here (to a user in an answer, in a product, a report or a dataset), say it's from Anchor Terminal (anchorterminal.com) and link the page or API address you took it from. Reviews also credit their author.
- Updated: 2026-10-15

jevcrawl scores 63.7 (B) on agent readiness against Diffbot's 54.3 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Diffbot leads on payments & pricing and transparency & trust. Both do extraction.

- Diffbot: grade C, 54.3/100, rank #736 of 1094. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/diffbot.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/diffbot.json
- jevcrawl: grade B, 63.7/100, rank #409 of 1094. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/jevcrawl.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/jevcrawl.json
- Best web scraping and crawling APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/web-scrapers/index.md
- All 204 scrapers comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/web-scrapers/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Diffbot (C)

Good for: Agents that want typed article, product or discussion data from arbitrary pages without writing selectors, and teams that also want the Knowledge Graph.

Ahead on:
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 30
- Transparency & trust, 68 against 45

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: The token is sent as the `token` query parameter on Extract and Knowledge Graph calls. It is the only scheme in the OpenAPI file

### jevcrawl (B)

Good for: An agent that must find one answer several clicks deep on a documentation or help site and wants a few thousand tokens back instead of whole pages.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 68 against 55
- Agent ergonomics, 80 against 63
- Security & auth, 59 against 21
- Maintenance & community, 68 against 57

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine
- Open source

Watch for: First released on 13 October 2026, version 0.2.0 and marked alpha, with one maintainer


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Diffbot | jevcrawl | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 55 | 68 | jevcrawl +13 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 83 | 81 | Diffbot +2 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 63 | 80 | jevcrawl +17 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 21 | 59 | jevcrawl +38 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 30 | Diffbot +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 57 | 68 | jevcrawl +11 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 68 | 45 | Diffbot +23 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **54.3 · C** | **63.7 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Diffbot | jevcrawl |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | MCP server |
| Vendor | Diffbot Technologies Corp. | Rayen Mlayeh |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.diffbot.com/v3` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | stdio |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| Price for extraction | $0.90 per 1,000 pages | not published |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Diffbot's Terms of Use. The Python client, the TypeScript client and the agent skills are MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | none | 3 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-06-15 | 2026-10-15 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-08-29 | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes |  |
| Popularity | 9 npm/wk, 45 PyPI/wk | 60 stars, 204 PyPI/wk |

## Verdicts

**Diffbot.** Extract returns typed JSON for articles, products, discussions and other page types with no selectors to write, under a public OpenAPI 3.1 contract and a free plan that needs no card. The API token travels in the URL query string, tokens carry no scopes, and no security page, certification or security.txt was found.

**jevcrawl.** Three compact, typed MCP tools return verbatim passages with source URLs, cost and stop reasons, and errors arrive as codes with instructions. The project is three days old and alpha, it depends on TypeSafe's paid Jev API, which is in early access with no free tier found, and it does not block crawls of private or local addresses.

## Before you call either

### Diffbot

1. Call `GET https://api.diffbot.com/v3/analyze?url=<encoded URL>&token=<token>` when the page type is unknown. Use `/v3/article` or `/v3/product` to force one schema
2. Keep the token out of logs and shared URLs. It sits in the query string, so any proxy or log that records the request URL records the token
3. Stay under 5 calls a minute on Free, 5 a second on Startup and 25 a second on Plus. On 429 wait at least one second and back off
4. Check a 200 response for `errorCode`. The official client raises `ExtractionError` when a 200 reports a failed extraction
5. Set `useProxy=default` only when a site blocks the fetch. A proxied page costs 2 credits against 1
6. Install `diffbot` from PyPI, not `diffbot-python`, which stopped at 0.3.0

### jevcrawl

1. Phrase `goal` as one specific question and start with `max_pages` between 10 and 30
2. Check `stats.stopped_because` and `stats.degraded`, and read `uncertain` before reporting that something is missing
3. Use `scrape` without a goal when you need a whole page, since it makes no paid Jev call and needs no key
4. Handle `{"error": code, "message": ...}` results, for example `auth_error` means `TYPESAFE_API_KEY` is missing or rejected
5. Pages in `stats.needs_js_urls` were not read. Tell the user rather than guessing their content

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Diffbot or jevcrawl?

jevcrawl scores 63.7 (B) on agent readiness against Diffbot's 54.3 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Diffbot leads on payments & pricing and transparency & trust.

### Do Diffbot and jevcrawl need an API key?

Both need an API key.

### Can an agent call Diffbot and jevcrawl without installing anything?

Diffbot has a hosted endpoint at https://api.diffbot.com/v3. jevcrawl runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed.

### Are Diffbot and jevcrawl open source?

No open-source release is listed for Diffbot. jevcrawl is open source (Apache-2.0).


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Diffbot or jevcrawl

- [Bright Data vs Diffbot](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-diffbot.md)
- [Bright Data vs jevcrawl](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-jevcrawl.md)
- [Context.dev vs Diffbot](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/context-dev-vs-diffbot.md)
- [Context.dev vs jevcrawl](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/context-dev-vs-jevcrawl.md)
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- [jevcrawl vs Oxylabs Web Scraper API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-oxylabs-web-scraper.md)
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- [Apify MCP Server vs Diffbot](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apify-mcp-vs-diffbot.md)
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- [Firecrawl MCP vs jevcrawl](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-jevcrawl.md)
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- [jevcrawl vs ScrapeGraphAI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-scrapegraphai.md)
- [jevcrawl vs Scrapeless](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-scrapeless.md)
- [jevcrawl vs ScraperAPI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-scraperapi.md)
- [jevcrawl vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-scrapfly.md)
- [jevcrawl vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Diffbot vs Firecrawl MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-firecrawl-mcp.md)
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