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Head to head · Extraction · October 2026 research run

Diffbot vs Zyte API

Zyte API scores 69.7 (B) on agent readiness against Diffbot's 54.3 (C), and leads in 5 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 Zyte APIZyte Group Limited · HTTP API B69.7/100#175 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

Zyte API B

Good for An agent or pipeline that fetches protected pages and wants the service to choose proxy and browser per site and to bill only success, and teams already on Scrapy.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 85 against 55
  • Agent ergonomics, 72 against 63
  • Security & auth, 55 against 21
  • Maintenance & community, 77 against 57

Watch for

Request price depends on the target site's tier, from $0.13 to $1.27 per 1,000 HTTP requests and $1.01 to $16.08 with a browser on pay-as-you-go

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDiffbotZyte APIEdge
Reliability16%205585Zyte API +30
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28385Zyte API +2
Agent ergonomics13%16.26372Zyte API +9
Security & auth14%17.52155Zyte API +34
Payments & pricing10%12.54040even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.85777Zyte API +20
Transparency & trust7%8.86866Diffbot +2
Negative events≤1500
Total54.3 · C69.7 · B

Facts side by side

FactDiffbotZyte API
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorDiffbot Technologies Corp.Zyte Group Limited
Hosted endpointhttps://api.diffbot.com/v3https://api.zyte.com/v1/extract
TransportsHTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthAPI keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumPay per use
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 MITProprietary service under Zyte's terms of service. The Python client is BSD 3-Clause, and the Agentic Web Data plugin is under Zyte's own end-user licence
Tools exposednone34
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-06-152026-10-05
Terms last updatedno date given2026-09-22
Privacy policy last updated2025-08-292024-08-30
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textyes
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 waiveryesyes
Popularity9 npm/wk, 45 PyPI/wk42k PyPI/wk

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.

Zyte API

One POST endpoint with an OpenAPI 3 contract picks proxies, browser rendering and extraction per site, bills only successful responses, and sends problem+json errors with Retry-After. Prices vary by target site across five tiers, so cost per request isn't known before the site is assigned one, and no dated API changelog was found.

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

Zyte API

  1. Send the API key as the Basic auth username with an empty password to https://api.zyte.com/v1/extract. Set only one of httpResponseBody or browserHtml, or one extraction field
  2. Ask for httpResponseBody before browserHtml. Browser requests cost about eight to thirteen times more per tier
  3. Retry 429, 503 and 520 after the Retry-After seconds, with backoff. They aren't billed. Don't retry 400, 401, 422 or 451
  4. Read statusCode in a 200 response. A target site's 404 comes back as a successful, billed Zyte API response
  5. Have the owner set a blocking spending limit on the key you use. A 403 /auth/account-suspended means the limit or the trial month ended

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Diffbot or Zyte API?

Zyte API scores 69.7 (B) on agent readiness against Diffbot's 54.3 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories.

Do Diffbot and Zyte API need an API key?

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

Can an agent call Diffbot and Zyte API without installing anything?

Yes. Diffbot has a hosted endpoint at https://api.diffbot.com/v3 and Zyte API at https://api.zyte.com/v1/extract.

Other comparisons with Diffbot or Zyte API

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