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Head to head · Extraction · October 2026 research run

Diffbot vs Scrapingdog

Diffbot scores 54.3 (C) on agent readiness against Scrapingdog's 39.2 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Scrapingdog 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 ScrapingdogScrapingdog (OpenData Labs) · HTTP API E39.2/100#917 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 43
  • Agent ergonomics, 63 against 44
  • Security & auth, 21 against 5
  • Maintenance & community, 57 against 45
  • Transparency & trust, 68 against 55

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

Scrapingdog E

Good for A budget agent that wants parsed Google, Amazon or LinkedIn results and can keep the key out of logs.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 62 against 55

Also in its favour

  • Runs on your own machine

Watch for

API key only travels in the URL query string

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDiffbotScrapingdogEdge
Reliability16%205562Scrapingdog +7
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28343Diffbot +40
Agent ergonomics13%16.26344Diffbot +19
Security & auth14%17.5215Diffbot +16
Payments & pricing10%12.54040even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.85745Diffbot +12
Transparency & trust7%8.86855Diffbot +13
Negative events≤150-2
Total54.3 · C39.2 · E

Facts side by side

FactDiffbotScrapingdog
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorDiffbot Technologies Corp.Scrapingdog (OpenData Labs)
Hosted endpointhttps://api.diffbot.com/v3https://api.scrapingdog.com/scrape
TransportsHTTPHTTP, stdio
AuthAPI keyAPI 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 exposednone35
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registrynot listedio.github.Darshan972/scrapingdog-mcp
Last release2026-06-152026-07-31
Terms last updatedno date given2026-01-13
Privacy policy last updated2025-08-292025-07-17
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 textyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesnot found in the text
Popularity9 npm/wk, 45 PyPI/wk0 stars, 41 npm/wk, 12 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.

Scrapingdog

A plain request is 1 credit, about $0.20 per 1,000 on Lite. API key only travels in the URL query string.

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

Scrapingdog

  1. Add dynamic=false unless the page needs JavaScript. It cuts the cost from 5 credits to 1, whatever the MCP description says
  2. Keep request URLs out of logs, since they carry api_key
  3. Set client timeouts above 60 seconds and retry on 429 or timeout. Failures aren't billed
  4. Prefer the parsed endpoints (Google, Amazon) over scraping the raw page when one exists

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Diffbot or Scrapingdog?

Diffbot scores 54.3 (C) on agent readiness against Scrapingdog's 39.2 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Scrapingdog leads on reliability.

Do Diffbot and Scrapingdog need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call Diffbot and Scrapingdog without installing anything?

Yes. Diffbot has a hosted endpoint at https://api.diffbot.com/v3 and Scrapingdog at https://api.scrapingdog.com/scrape.

Other comparisons with Diffbot or Scrapingdog

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