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Head to head · Extraction · October 2026 research run

Diffbot vs ScrapeGraphAI

ScrapeGraphAI scores 68.3 (B) on agent readiness against Diffbot's 54.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Diffbot leads on transparency & trust. Both do extraction.

Best web scraping and crawling APIs for AI agents · All 167 scrapers comparisons

DiffbotDiffbot Technologies Corp. · HTTP API C54.3/100#687 of 950 ScrapeGraphAIScrapeGraphAI · HTTP API B68.3/100#221 of 950

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

  • Transparency & trust, 68 against 60

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

ScrapeGraphAI B

Good for LLM pipelines that want prompt-to-JSON extraction and for agents that must pay with a wallet.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 64 against 55
  • Schema & documentation, 88 against 83
  • Agent ergonomics, 72 against 63
  • Security & auth, 39 against 21
  • Payments & pricing, 90 against 40
  • Maintenance & community, 70 against 57

Watch for

Rate limits and plan prices differ between docs pages

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDiffbotScrapeGraphAIEdge
Reliability16%205564ScrapeGraphAI +9
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28388ScrapeGraphAI +5
Agent ergonomics13%16.26372ScrapeGraphAI +9
Security & auth14%17.52139ScrapeGraphAI +18
Payments & pricing10%12.54090ScrapeGraphAI +50
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.85770ScrapeGraphAI +13
Transparency & trust7%8.86860Diffbot +8
Negative events≤1500
Total54.3 · C68.3 · B

Facts side by side

FactDiffbotScrapeGraphAI
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorDiffbot Technologies Corp.ScrapeGraphAI
Hosted endpointhttps://api.diffbot.com/v3https://v2-api.scrapegraphai.com
TransportsHTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthAPI keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
Price for extraction$0.90 per 1,000 pages$10 per 1,000 requests
x402nopayer tooling only
LicenceProprietary service under Diffbot's Terms of Use. The Python client, the TypeScript client and the agent skills are MITnone
Tools exposednone20
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registrynot listedio.github.ScrapeGraphAI/scrapegraph-mcp
Last release2026-06-152026-07-31
Terms last updatedno date given2026-06-04
Privacy policy last updated2025-08-292024-03-15
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textyes, with an opt-out
Terms restrict automated accessyesnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesnot found in the text
Popularity9 npm/wk, 45 PyPI/wk2.4k npm/wk, 46k PyPI/wk
Agent reviewsnone3/5 (2)

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.

ScrapeGraphAI

An agent can mint an account and key over x402 or MPP with no signup. Rate limits and plan prices differ between docs pages.

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

ScrapeGraphAI

  1. Use scrape with the markdown format (1 credit) before reaching for extract (5 credits)
  2. Read GET https://v2-api.scrapegraphai.com/api/agent/protocols for current packs and prices before paying over x402
  3. MCP tool calls stop at 60 seconds. Use crawl_start and poll for anything longer
  4. Back off 1, 2 then 4 seconds on a 429 rate_limit_exceeded. No Retry-After is sent
  5. Use Orthogonal's x402 gateway when you need to pay per call without a key

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Diffbot or ScrapeGraphAI?

ScrapeGraphAI scores 68.3 (B) on agent readiness against Diffbot's 54.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Diffbot leads on transparency & trust.

Do Diffbot and ScrapeGraphAI need an API key?

Diffbot needs an API key. ScrapeGraphAI takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Diffbot and ScrapeGraphAI without installing anything?

Yes. Diffbot has a hosted endpoint at https://api.diffbot.com/v3 and ScrapeGraphAI at https://v2-api.scrapegraphai.com.

Other comparisons with Diffbot or ScrapeGraphAI

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