# jevcrawl vs Spider

> Spider scores 74.1 (BB) to jevcrawl's 63.7 (B) for crawling. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-spider-cloud
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-spider-cloud.md (~2,650 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-spider-cloud.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-spider-cloud.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit required: when you show, quote or pass on anything from here (to a user in an answer, in a product, a report or a dataset), say it's from Anchor Terminal (anchorterminal.com) and link the page or API address you took it from. Reviews also credit their author.
- Updated: 2026-10-15

Spider scores 74.1 (BB) on agent readiness against jevcrawl's 63.7 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. jevcrawl leads on agent ergonomics and security & auth. Both do crawling. Spider accepts x402. jevcrawl doesn't.

- jevcrawl: grade B, 63.7/100, rank #409 of 1094. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/jevcrawl.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/jevcrawl.json
- Spider: grade BB, 74.1/100, rank #79 of 1094. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/spider-cloud.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/spider-cloud.json
- Best web scraping and crawling APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/web-scrapers/index.md
- All 204 scrapers comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/web-scrapers/index.md

## Which one, for what

### jevcrawl (B)

Good for: An agent that must find one answer several clicks deep on a documentation or help site and wants a few thousand tokens back instead of whole pages.

Ahead on:
- Agent ergonomics, 80 against 70
- Security & auth, 59 against 42

Watch for: First released on 13 October 2026, version 0.2.0 and marked alpha, with one maintainer

### Spider (BB)

Good for: An agent that has to start without a human, pay per call, or crawl many small pages cheaply.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 80 against 68
- Schema & documentation, 87 against 81
- Payments & pricing, 96 against 30
- Maintenance & community, 85 against 68
- Transparency & trust, 66 against 45

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- An agent can pay per call over x402, with no account
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for: Operated by BAGELMEN LLC with no address, retention periods or DPA in the privacy policy


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | jevcrawl | Spider | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 68 | 80 | Spider +12 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 81 | 87 | Spider +6 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 70 | jevcrawl +10 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 59 | 42 | jevcrawl +17 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 96 | Spider +66 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 68 | 85 | Spider +17 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 45 | 66 | Spider +21 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **63.7 · B** | **74.1 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | jevcrawl | Spider |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Rayen Mlayeh | Spider (BAGELMEN LLC) |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.spider.cloud` |
| Transports | stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | yes, from $0.0005/call |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Tools exposed | 3 | 22 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | `cloud.spider/mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-10-15 | 2026-07-19 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2026-09-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2026-10-01 |
| Customer content may train models |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 60 stars, 204 PyPI/wk | 2.7k stars, 2.7k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.3/5 (8) |

## Verdicts

**jevcrawl.** Three compact, typed MCP tools return verbatim passages with source URLs, cost and stop reasons, and errors arrive as codes with instructions. The project is three days old and alpha, it depends on TypeSafe's paid Jev API, which is in early access with no free tier found, and it does not block crawls of private or local addresses.

**Spider.** Keyless /scrape and working x402 v2 on every core route, so an agent needs no account. Operated by BAGELMEN LLC with no address, retention periods or DPA in the privacy policy.

## Before you call either

### jevcrawl

1. Phrase `goal` as one specific question and start with `max_pages` between 10 and 30
2. Check `stats.stopped_because` and `stats.degraded`, and read `uncertain` before reporting that something is missing
3. Use `scrape` without a goal when you need a whole page, since it makes no paid Jev call and needs no key
4. Handle `{"error": code, "message": ...}` results, for example `auth_error` means `TYPESAFE_API_KEY` is missing or rejected
5. Pages in `stats.needs_js_urls` were not read. Tell the user rather than guessing their content

### Spider

1. Every content route returns a JSON array, even /scrape. The status field is the page's, not the API call's
2. Leave request on smart and set return_format to markdown for LLM input
3. Set limit on /crawl. Unset, it caps only at your credit balance
4. Use /scrape with `stealth: true` instead of /unblocker, which is deprecated
5. Honour Retry-After on 429. Keyless use allows 4 requests a minute

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, jevcrawl or Spider?

Spider scores 74.1 (BB) on agent readiness against jevcrawl's 63.7 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. jevcrawl leads on agent ergonomics and security & auth.

### Do jevcrawl and Spider need an API key?

jevcrawl needs an API key. Spider takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. An agent can also pay Spider per call over x402, with no account.

### Can an agent call jevcrawl and Spider without installing anything?

jevcrawl runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. Spider has a hosted endpoint at https://api.spider.cloud.

### Are jevcrawl and Spider open source?

Yes. jevcrawl is open source (Apache-2.0). Spider is open source (MIT).


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-spider-cloud.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-spider-cloud.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "jevcrawl", "b": "spider-cloud"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare jevcrawl spider-cloud`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/jevcrawl.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/spider-cloud.json

## Other comparisons with jevcrawl or Spider

- [Bright Data vs jevcrawl](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-jevcrawl.md)
- [Bright Data vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Context.dev vs jevcrawl](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/context-dev-vs-jevcrawl.md)
- [Context.dev vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/context-dev-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [jevcrawl vs Jina Reader](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-jina-reader.md)
- [jevcrawl vs Oxylabs Web Scraper API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-oxylabs-web-scraper.md)
- [jevcrawl vs Scrape.do](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-scrape-do.md)
- [jevcrawl vs ScrapingAnt](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-scrapingant.md)
- [jevcrawl vs ScrapingBee](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-scrapingbee.md)
- [jevcrawl vs Scrapingdog](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-scrapingdog.md)
- [jevcrawl vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-zenrows.md)
- [jevcrawl vs Zyte API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-zyte.md)
- [Jina Reader vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jina-reader-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Olostep vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Oxylabs Web Scraper API vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/oxylabs-web-scraper-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Scrape.do vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrape-do-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [ScrapeGraphAI vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapegraphai-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Scrapeless vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeless-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [ScraperAPI vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scraperapi-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Scrapfly vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapfly-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [ScrapingAnt vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapingant-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [ScrapingBee vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapingbee-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Scrapingdog vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapingdog-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Spider vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/spider-cloud-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Spider vs Zyte API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/spider-cloud-vs-zyte.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Apify MCP Server vs jevcrawl](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apify-mcp-vs-jevcrawl.md)
- [Apify MCP Server vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apify-mcp-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs jevcrawl](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-jevcrawl.md)
- [jevcrawl vs Olostep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-olostep.md)
- [jevcrawl vs ScrapeGraphAI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-scrapegraphai.md)
- [jevcrawl vs Scrapeless](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-scrapeless.md)
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