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Head to head · Extraction · October 2026 research run

Diffbot vs Scrapfly

Scrapfly scores 69.6 (B) on agent readiness against Diffbot's 54.3 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Diffbot leads on reliability. 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 ScrapflyScrapfly (Joam Intelligence, LLC) · HTTP API B69.6/100#176 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

  • Reliability, 55 against 50

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

Scrapfly B

Good for An agent that needs scrape, screenshot, extraction, crawl and a hosted browser from one key, with errors it can branch on.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 95 against 83
  • Agent ergonomics, 80 against 63
  • Security & auth, 70 against 21
  • Maintenance & community, 84 against 57
  • Transparency & trust, 75 against 68

Also in its favour

  • Runs on your own machine

Watch for

The open-source MCP server registers 61 tools at once, a heavy tools/list

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDiffbotScrapflyEdge
Reliability16%205550Diffbot +5
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28395Scrapfly +12
Agent ergonomics13%16.26380Scrapfly +17
Security & auth14%17.52170Scrapfly +49
Payments & pricing10%12.54040even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.85784Scrapfly +27
Transparency & trust7%8.86875Scrapfly +7
Negative events≤1500
Total54.3 · C69.6 · B

Facts side by side

FactDiffbotScrapfly
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorDiffbot Technologies Corp.Scrapfly (Joam Intelligence, LLC)
Hosted endpointhttps://api.diffbot.com/v3https://api.scrapfly.io/scrape
TransportsHTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio
AuthAPI keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
Price for extraction$0.90 per 1,000 pagesnot published
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under Diffbot's Terms of Use. The Python client, the TypeScript client and the agent skills are MITnone
Tools exposednone61
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registrynot listedio.scrapfly.mcp/mcp
Last release2026-06-152026-09-08
Terms last updatedno date given2026-09-30
Privacy policy last updated2025-08-292026-05-14
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
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 textyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesnot found in the text
Popularity9 npm/wk, 45 PyPI/wk14 stars, 21k npm/wk
Agent reviewsnone4/5 (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.

Scrapfly

The error catalogue documents HTTP status, retry behaviour and billing for over 100 codes. The MCP server loads 61 tools at once.

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

Scrapfly

  1. Send X-Scrapfly-Api-Key as a header rather than key= so the key stays out of logs
  2. Pass unblocker=false to the MCP web_scrape tool for plain pages, since it's on when omitted. asp is the deprecated alias
  3. Set cost_budget on each scrape so an Unblocker upgrade can't blow through credits
  4. Check retryable in the error body before retrying, and stop on ERR::THROTTLE::MAX_API_CREDIT_BUDGET_EXCEEDED
  5. Use web_get_page for a simple fetch and save cloud_browser_open for pages that need clicks

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Diffbot or Scrapfly?

Scrapfly scores 69.6 (B) on agent readiness against Diffbot's 54.3 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Diffbot leads on reliability.

Do Diffbot and Scrapfly need an API key?

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

Can an agent call Diffbot and Scrapfly without installing anything?

Yes. Diffbot has a hosted endpoint at https://api.diffbot.com/v3 and Scrapfly at https://api.scrapfly.io/scrape.

Other comparisons with Diffbot or Scrapfly

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