# Diffbot vs Qovia

> Qovia scores 61.2 (C) 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-qovia
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-qovia.md (~6,100 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: 2026-11-01

Qovia scores 61.2 (C) on agent readiness against Diffbot's 54.3 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Diffbot leads on reliability and transparency & trust. Both do extraction.

- Diffbot: grade C, 54.3/100, rank #831 of 1253. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/diffbot.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/diffbot.json
- Qovia: grade C, 61.2/100, rank #558 of 1253. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/qovia.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/qovia.json
- Best web scraping and crawling APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/web-scrapers/index.md
- All 261 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:
- Reliability, 55 against 40
- Transparency & trust, 68 against 30

Also in its favour:
- 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

### Qovia (C)

Good for: Agents that need structured public data from Chinese platforms (Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Weibo, Bilibili, Kuaishou, Zhihu, WeChat official accounts, Taobao and JD reviews) or the Xingtu and Pugongying creator marketplaces, with TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, X and Reddit beside them, paid per successful call from a prepaid balance.

Ahead on:
- Agent ergonomics, 77 against 63
- Security & auth, 60 against 21
- Payments & pricing, 55 against 40
- Maintenance & community, 77 against 57

Watch for: No status page, incident history or SLA; the terms promise nothing about uptime and the Python client is the only retry guidance beyond `Retry-After`


## Why the edge

### Security & auth: Qovia +39

- Diffbot (21): One token per account, sent in the URL query string as the documented and only scheme in the OpenAPI file. Tokens are revocable in the dashboard per a June 2025 changelog title, and child tokens exist on Plus and above (20 of 30, less 10 for the secret in the URL, so 10). Child tokens have the same rights as the primary one and there is no read-only mode. The skills limit the agent to the `db` binary through `allowed-tools` (5 of 20). The API returns untrusted web content and no guidance on prompt injection was found (0 of 15). The token details page shows usage activity and an Account API reports usage. No per-call log was found (6 of 15). No security.txt, security page, certification or bug bounty was found on the pages read, and the privacy policy says some API calls rely on HTTP without encryption (0 of 20).
- Qovia (60): API keys with scopes chosen at creation (every endpoint, search, every raw endpoint or one of 24 platform groups), an optional expiry, revocation in the console and hashed storage; the docs say the key is read from the Authorization or x-api-key header only, never the URL or a cookie, and 30 failed authentications from one IP in a minute are throttled. No OAuth and no rotation feature beyond creating another key (24 of 30). The whole surface is read-only retrieval, scopes restrict a key to platforms, the two MCP catalogue tools need no key, and the docs and SECURITY.md tell users to give AI tools a separate scoped key (17 of 20). Every response is third-party platform text, and the only related statement is that error messages never contain the data source's own text; nothing on treating returned content as untrusted (3 of 15). request_id is the usage record ID on every answer, the console lists every charge in a usage log, X-Qovia-Charged and X-Qovia-Balance headers report each call, and GET /v1/account returns the key's scopes and balance at no charge; no exportable audit log or per-call endpoint was found (11 of 15). No security.txt on qovia.ai or api.qovia.ai (404), no bug bounty, SOC 2 or ISO 27001; the repository's SECURITY.md names a Telegram handle and a mailbox for reports covering both hosts (5 of 20). 24+17+3+11+5 = 60.

### Transparency & trust: Diffbot +38

- Diffbot (68): A closed service under undated Terms of Use that cover the Site and the Service, cap liability at $10 and grant Diffbot a perpetual licence to process submitted queries. The clients and skills are MIT (13 of 30). The privacy policy of 29 August 2025 says query history and API calls are stored against the API key and kept no longer than necessary, with no retention period given. The GDPR and data rights page was not read (14 of 30). There is no deprecation policy. The changelog carries dated notices, such as a May 2024 entry announcing a field removal for 30 August 2024, and the terms give 14 days' notice of fee changes (8 of 20). The privacy policy names its service providers one by one, among them AWS, Stripe, Intercom, Salesforce, Slack and Amplitude, and says all are in the United States (14 of 20).
- Qovia (30): Closed service. The Terms of Service is one paragraph that names no legal entity, address or liability terms, says Delaware law governs and that the page is a summary with the signed agreement governing; the repository's client is MIT. Between the closed and unclear bands (7 of 30). The privacy policy is one paragraph. Account information is used to deliver and bill, personal information is not sold, requests and results are not resold, deletion requests go to the support mailbox, and the agreement governs where it differs. No retention periods, no subprocessors, no DPA, and no statement about the cache the prov.source flag implies; the SECURITY.md repeats the same points (8 of 30). A 410 endpoint_disabled code exists for retired endpoints and the changelog is dated, but there is no deprecation policy or notice period and nothing is marked deprecated (5 of 20). Stripe is named on the pricing page as the card and Alipay processor; no other provider, data location or transfer basis is stated (3 of 20). 7+8+5+3 = 23.

### Maintenance & community: Qovia +20

- Diffbot (57): The official Python client was tagged v3.0.0 on 28 September 2026, eleven days before the check. The API changelog's newest entry is 15 June 2026, 116 days before the check, and recency is scored on that entry (10). Tagged releases in the last 90 days are skills v1.1.0 and v1.1.1 on 12 and 13 August and Python v3.0.0 on 28 September. The API changelog has none in that window (20). A public changelog with RSS and a support address exist. GitHub issues were not read (8 of 15 for a closed service). Python and TypeScript clients are current, but the docs name the packages `diffbot-python` and `diffbot-typescript` while the repositories publish `diffbot` and `@diffbot/typescript` (12 of 15). The Python repository tests on Python 3.9 to 3.13 and raised two dependencies for security fixes on 28 September. We did not see CI results (7 of 10).
- Qovia (77): The newest changes are the registry entry ai.qovia/qovia 0.1.1 and the repository's tools snapshot and plugin manifests on 28 October 2026, after the Python client 0.1.1 on PyPI on 27 October; the repository was pushed on 1 November (30). Eight changelog entries on 21 and 22 October, two registry versions (22 and 28 October) and two PyPI releases (25 and 27 October) are more than three dated entries in 90 days, all within ten days (20). Closed service with a public changelog. Support is Telegram, WhatsApp, WeChat and one mailbox, with a one-business-day reply promised for email; GitHub issues are enabled on the repository with none opened, and no forum, Discord or community was found (7 of 15). ai.qovia/qovia is in the official MCP registry under a DNS-verified reverse-DNS namespace at 0.1.1, marked latest, and the Python client is an official package on PyPI (15). The client is standard-library Python with a test file, MIT, no dependencies and no CI workflow in the repository tree; the account's other nine repositories are forks of lists and directories (5 of 10). 30+20+7+15+5 = 77.

### Reliability: Diffbot +15

- Diffbot (55): Graded as a hosted API. status.diffbot.com is a Pingdom public report with 13 checks, among them Analyze API, Article API, Crawlbot and Websearch, with daily uptime for seven days and no incident notes (15 of 20). No 90-day record can be read. In the week to 9 October 2026 Analyze API shows 99.69 per cent, with 2, 11 and 17 minutes down on 4, 5 and 6 October, and Article API 5, 9 and 2 minutes on 5 to 7 October (5 of 30, the line for no readable history). Rate limits are published per plan, 5 calls a minute on Free, 5 a second on Startup and 25 a second on Plus (15). The 429 page says to pause one second and back off. No `Retry-After` header is documented, though the official client reads one (10 of 15). No SLA was found (0). The Extract APIs are at `/v3` with no beta label (10).
- Qovia (40): Hosted reading, for the REST API with the MCP server described. No public status page was found. https://qovia.ai/status/ answers 404, status.qovia.ai does not resolve and neither the docs nor the footer links one (0). No readable incident history, so 5 by the rubric (5). Limits are published with numbers on the quickstart's rate-limits section, 60 requests a minute per account before the first top-up and 600 after on a sliding 60-second window, with X-RateLimit-Limit and X-RateLimit-Remaining headers, a 64 KiB body cap, an empty-call throttle (50 calls in 10 minutes with over 80 per cent empty, not found or rejected) and a per-second cap per endpoint without a number (15). Retry-After is declared on too_many_auth_failures, rate_limited, too_many_unbilled, endpoint_busy and upstream_busy, the error table marks the retryable codes, the docs say a 503 endpoint_unavailable carries none and will not clear, and the Python client retries 429 and 503 honouring the header. Every operation is a read, including POST /v1/search, and a failed or timed-out call is refunded, so idempotency keys are not needed (15). No SLA. The terms summary says nothing about uptime and the pricing FAQ excludes outages, rate limits and platform changes from refunds; the 11 September 2026 archived home page advertised a 99.95 per cent enterprise SLA that the current pages have dropped (0). The endpoints are sold and labelled Live on the docs and coverage pages, but every one of the 143 carries x-qovia-status beta in the OpenAPI file, the API version is 0.1.0 and the MCP server reports 0.1.0 (5 of 10). 0+5+15+15+0+5 = 40.

### Payments & pricing: Qovia +15

- Diffbot (40): No x402, MPP or L402 was found (0 of 40). Plan prices, the credit cost of each action and overage per credit are public without a login (20). The Free plan has 10,000 credits a month and needs no card (20). A person signs up in a browser at app.diffbot.com to get a token (0).
- Qovia (55): No x402, MPP or L402 on Qovia's own endpoints; USDT on TRC-20 is a top-up method from a console session, not a machine payment protocol. The vendor's five Actors on the Apify Store under the profile qovia (Qovia Data, the same Telegram handle and mailbox as the site), such as the Xingtu Actor at $0.01 to $0.06 a section, can be paid through Apify, whose prepaid token is sold over x402, so partial credit for a third-party route on part of the catalogue (10 of 40). Per-call prices are published without a login, per endpoint in the OpenAPI file, llms.txt and the docs, search at $5 and raw endpoints from $0.5 to $19.5 per 1,000, with the tier rule and payment fees stated (20). 50 trial calls for a new account, counted only when a call returns data; the quickstart says to top up when they run out and the docs ask for no card at sign-up, though no account was created to confirm it (20). A person signs up in a browser and creates a key; the MCP catalogue tools work without a key but data calls do not, and the Apify route reaches four platforms without a Qovia account (5 of 20). 10+20+20+5 = 55.

### Agent ergonomics: Qovia +14

- Diffbot (63): Graded on the REST API, with the skills noted. `mode` limits extraction to one page type, `fields` adds optional fields and `discussion=false` drops comments, but an article response carries both `html` and `text` with no way found to drop either. The skills return Markdown by default (14 of 25). A single-URL call has no pagination. Web Search takes `size` and `maxTokens` and DQL takes `size` per the client. Crawl result paging was not read (10 of 20). Errors are JSON with `errorCode` and `error` and six docs pages. A failed extraction can arrive in a 200, and the 429 text says the site received too many requests when the cause is the caller's plan limit (12 of 20). Extract calls are GET reads and safe to retry. Whether a failed call uses a credit was not found, and there is no idempotency key for creating crawl jobs or custom APIs (12 of 20). Only `url` and `token` are required, with official Python and TypeScript clients and a CLI (15).
- Qovia (77): API reading. Responses come in fixed page sizes per endpoint, from about 5 comments on Xiaohongshu to 100 Fliggy reviews, with limit only on Bilibili danmaku and no field selection; the record shape is compact and shared across posts, notes and videos. The MCP server loads four tools by default, keeps the catalogue out of context until search_endpoints and get_endpoint are called, and ?tools= selects platforms or everything, which on the MCP reading would score 25 (18 of 25). Cursor pagination with has_more on most lists, search_id on Douyin and Zhihu search, page numbers on Weibo, Xiaohongshu and Bilibili, sort options on several, and the cross-platform search filters by platform, content type, sentiment and whole-day date windows up to 90 days (17 of 20). One error object with 20 codes, request_id on every answer, the retryable set marked, refunded codes separated from never-charged ones, and MCP tool errors carrying error.code, the HTTP status and retry_after_seconds (19 of 20). All calls are reads, failed and empty calls are refunded, Retry-After is declared and the Python client retries; no readOnlyHint or other annotation appears in the vendor's 28 October tools/list snapshot (14 of 20). One required parameter on 117 of 144 operations and defaults set on the server, but the only official SDK is the Python client; Node and curl are examples (9 of 15). 18+17+19+14+9 = 77.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Diffbot | Qovia | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 55 | 40 | Diffbot +15 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 83 | 86 | Qovia +3 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 63 | 77 | Qovia +14 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 21 | 60 | Qovia +39 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 55 | Qovia +15 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 57 | 77 | Qovia +20 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 68 | 30 | Diffbot +38 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **54.3 · C** | **61.2 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Diffbot | Qovia |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Diffbot Technologies Corp. | Qovia |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.diffbot.com/v3` | `https://api.qovia.ai` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| 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 | Proprietary hosted service under a one-paragraph Terms of Service summary that defers to a signed agreement. The qovia/qovia-mcp repository (setup guide, examples, Python client) and the qovia package on PyPI are MIT; the service's source is not public |
| Tools exposed | none | 141 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | `ai.qovia/qovia` |
| Last release | 2026-06-15 | 2026-10-28 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | not read yet |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-08-29 | not read yet |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not read yet |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not read yet |
| Popularity | 9 npm/wk, 45 PyPI/wk | 0 stars |

## 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.

**Qovia.** An OpenAPI 3.1 file with 144 operations, one envelope and 20 error codes, per-endpoint prices with failed and empty calls refunded, scoped keys and a four-tool MCP server that keeps the catalogue out of context. No status page, no legal entity, one-paragraph terms and privacy pages, and a product ten days old at the check.

## 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

### Qovia

1. Send `Authorization: Bearer sk-qovia-...` to https://api.qovia.ai and check `meta.empty` on every HTTP 200; `data` may be `null` or an empty structure and nothing is charged for it.
2. Branch on `error.code`, never on `message`. Retry only `rate_limited`, `too_many_unbilled`, `endpoint_busy`, `upstream_busy` and `too_many_auth_failures` after `Retry-After`; `endpoint_unavailable` has none and will not clear.
3. Stay under 60 requests a minute (600 after the first top-up) across every key on the account, and keep empty or not-found calls under 80 per cent of the last 10 minutes or expect 429 `too_many_unbilled`.
4. Pass the previous page's `cursor` (and `search_id` on Douyin and Zhihu search) back unchanged and stop when `has_more` is false; each page is a separate charge, and unknown parameters answer 400.
5. For MCP, connect to https://api.qovia.ai/mcp over Streamable HTTP; call `search_endpoints` then `get_endpoint` before `call_endpoint`, or add `?tools=douyin,kuaishou` for typed direct tools. Catalogue tools need no key.

## Questions

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

Qovia scores 61.2 (C) on agent readiness against Diffbot's 54.3 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Diffbot leads on reliability and transparency & trust.

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

Both need an API key.

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

Yes. Diffbot has a hosted endpoint at https://api.diffbot.com/v3 and Qovia at https://api.qovia.ai.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Diffbot or Qovia

- [Bright Data vs Qovia](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-qovia.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs Qovia](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-qovia.md)
- [Bright Data vs Diffbot](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-diffbot.md)
- [Context.dev vs Diffbot](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/context-dev-vs-diffbot.md)
- [Diffbot vs Jina Reader](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-jina-reader.md)
- [Diffbot vs Scrape.do](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-scrape-do.md)
- [Diffbot vs Scrapeless](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-scrapeless.md)
- [Context.dev vs Qovia](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/context-dev-vs-qovia.md)
- [Diffbot vs Firecrawl MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-firecrawl-mcp.md)
- [Diffbot vs jevcrawl](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-jevcrawl.md)
- [Diffbot vs Olostep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-olostep.md)
- [Diffbot vs Oxylabs Web Scraper API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-oxylabs-web-scraper.md)
- [Diffbot vs ScrapeAtlas](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-scrapeatlas.md)
- [Diffbot vs ScrapeGraphAI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-scrapegraphai.md)
- [Diffbot vs ScraperAPI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-scraperapi.md)
- [Diffbot vs Scrapewise](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-scrapewise.md)
- [Diffbot vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-scrapfly.md)
- [Diffbot vs ScrapingAnt](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-scrapingant.md)
- [Diffbot vs ScrapingBee](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-scrapingbee.md)
- [Diffbot vs Scrapingdog](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-scrapingdog.md)
- [Diffbot vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Diffbot vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Diffbot vs Zyte API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-zyte.md)
- [jevcrawl vs Qovia](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-qovia.md)
- [Olostep vs Qovia](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-qovia.md)
- [Oxylabs Web Scraper API vs Qovia](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/oxylabs-web-scraper-vs-qovia.md)
- [Qovia vs ScrapeAtlas](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-scrapeatlas.md)
- [Qovia vs ScrapeGraphAI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-scrapegraphai.md)
- [Qovia vs ScraperAPI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-scraperapi.md)
- [Qovia vs Scrapewise](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-scrapewise.md)
- [Qovia vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-scrapfly.md)
- [Qovia vs ScrapingAnt](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-scrapingant.md)
- [Qovia vs ScrapingBee](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-scrapingbee.md)
- [Qovia vs Scrapingdog](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-scrapingdog.md)
- [Qovia vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Qovia vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Qovia vs Zyte API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-zyte.md)
- [Apify MCP Server vs Diffbot](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apify-mcp-vs-diffbot.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