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Head to head · Extraction · October 2026 research run

Diffbot vs ScrapingBee

ScrapingBee scores 59.2 (C) on agent readiness against Diffbot's 54.3 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Diffbot leads on schema & documentation and 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 ScrapingBeeScrapingBee (Oxylabs group) · HTTP API C59.2/100#557 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

  • Schema & documentation, 83 against 60
  • Transparency & trust, 68 against 63

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

ScrapingBee C

Good for Agents that mix general scraping with ready-made Google, Amazon and YouTube endpoints and want spend capped per call.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 70 against 55
  • Agent ergonomics, 68 against 63
  • Security & auth, 37 against 21
  • Maintenance & community, 85 against 57

Watch for

remote-mcp.txt says the hosted MCP only takes the key as ?api_key= in its URL

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDiffbotScrapingBeeEdge
Reliability16%205570ScrapingBee +15
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28360Diffbot +23
Agent ergonomics13%16.26368ScrapingBee +5
Security & auth14%17.52137ScrapingBee +16
Payments & pricing10%12.54040even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.85785ScrapingBee +28
Transparency & trust7%8.86863Diffbot +5
Negative events≤1500
Total54.3 · C59.2 · C

Facts side by side

FactDiffbotScrapingBee
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorDiffbot Technologies Corp.ScrapingBee (Oxylabs group)
Hosted endpointhttps://api.diffbot.com/v3https://app.scrapingbee.com/api/v1/
TransportsHTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumPaid
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 exposednone18
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-06-152026-09-11
Terms last updatedno date given2024-07-15
Privacy policy last updated2025-08-292024-07-15
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 textnot found in the text
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/wk132 stars, 49k npm/wk, 72k PyPI/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.

ScrapingBee

Dedicated Google, Amazon, Walmart, YouTube, ChatGPT and Gemini endpoints next to the general HTML API. remote-mcp.txt says the hosted MCP only takes the key as ?api_key= in its URL.

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

ScrapingBee

  1. Send render_js=false for static pages and files. It cuts the cost from 5 credits to 1
  2. Use mode=auto with max_cost=25 to stop it escalating to 75-credit stealth requests
  3. Keep the MCP URL with ?api_key= out of logs and shared configs
  4. Back off exponentially on 429 from the MCP, since its concurrency is shared across customers
  5. Expect 404 and 410 from the target to be billed. Other failures aren't

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Diffbot or ScrapingBee?

ScrapingBee scores 59.2 (C) on agent readiness against Diffbot's 54.3 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Diffbot leads on schema & documentation and transparency & trust.

Do Diffbot and ScrapingBee need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call Diffbot and ScrapingBee without installing anything?

Yes. Diffbot has a hosted endpoint at https://api.diffbot.com/v3 and ScrapingBee at https://app.scrapingbee.com/api/v1/.

Other comparisons with Diffbot or ScrapingBee

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