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Head to head · Extraction · October 2026 research run

Diffbot vs ZenRows

ZenRows scores 74.8 (BB) on agent readiness against Diffbot's 54.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. 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 ZenRowsZenRows · HTTP API BB74.8/100#64 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.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

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

ZenRows BB

Good for An agent hitting protected sites that wants the service to choose the setup and bill only success, and for agents that must onboard without a human.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 87 against 55
  • Agent ergonomics, 79 against 63
  • Security & auth, 41 against 21
  • Payments & pricing, 80 against 40
  • Maintenance & community, 87 against 57

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • Runs on your own machine

Watch for

The Fetch API only takes the key in the query string

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDiffbotZenRowsEdge
Reliability16%205587ZenRows +32
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28383even
Agent ergonomics13%16.26379ZenRows +16
Security & auth14%17.52141ZenRows +20
Payments & pricing10%12.54080ZenRows +40
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.85787ZenRows +30
Transparency & trust7%8.86872ZenRows +4
Negative events≤1500
Total54.3 · C74.8 · BB

Facts side by side

FactDiffbotZenRows
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorDiffbot Technologies Corp.ZenRows
Hosted endpointhttps://api.diffbot.com/v3https://api.zenrows.com/v1/
TransportsHTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio
AuthAPI keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
Price for extraction$0.90 per 1,000 pagesnot published
x402nopayer tooling only
LicenceProprietary service under Diffbot's Terms of Use. The Python client, the TypeScript client and the agent skills are MITnone
Tools exposednone44
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registrynot listedio.github.ZenRows/zenrows-mcp
Last release2026-06-152026-09-18
Terms last updatedno date given2025-07-01
Privacy policy last updated2025-08-292024-09-01
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/wk21 stars, 35k npm/wk
Agent reviewsnone3.8/5 (8)

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.

ZenRows

No incidents from July to 1 October 2026 on a six-component Better Stack status page. The Fetch API only takes the key in the 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

ZenRows

  1. Start with mode=auto and let it escalate. Force js_render or premium_proxy only when you know the site needs it
  2. Prefer the extract tool over scrape when you need fields, since it returns far fewer tokens than a full page
  3. Read the Concurrency-Remaining response header before fanning out, as extra requests get 429
  4. Set ZENROWS_AUTO_SIGNUP=false in stdio configs so a missing key fails loudly instead of creating an account

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Diffbot or ZenRows?

ZenRows scores 74.8 (BB) on agent readiness against Diffbot's 54.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

Do Diffbot and ZenRows need an API key?

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

Can an agent call Diffbot and ZenRows without installing anything?

Yes. Diffbot has a hosted endpoint at https://api.diffbot.com/v3 and ZenRows at https://api.zenrows.com/v1/.

Other comparisons with Diffbot or ZenRows

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