Head to head · Scraping · October 2026 research run

Jina Reader vs Outcrawl

Outcrawl scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against Jina Reader's 45.3 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Jina Reader leads on reliability. Both do scraping.

Best web scraping and crawling APIs for AI agents · All 284 scrapers comparisons

Which one, for what

Jina Reader E

Best for Agents that read the web a page at a time and want to bound the tokens.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 60 against 45

Also in its favour

  • Open source

Watch for

No price per token in any currency on the public page

Outcrawl B

Best for Agents that want one key and one balance for reading pages, walking a site, searching with rendered results and handing a signed-in or multi-step task to a hosted browser agent with a hard budget, and teams on TypeScript that want a residential-exit browser over CDP with a replay of every session.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 71 against 43
  • Agent ergonomics, 83 against 76
  • Security & auth, 66 against 32
  • Payments & pricing, 40 against 35
  • Maintenance & community, 79 against 65

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card
  • No incidents deducted, where Jina Reader loses 7 points for them

Watch for

No status page, incident history, SLA below Enterprise or security.txt; /status and status.outcrawl.ai do not answer

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Security & auth Outcrawl +34

Jina Reader 32

One Bearer key per account, revocable, no scopes, shared with Search, Embeddings and Reranker, and Reader also runs with no key at all (20). No write actions on Reader, and the MCP server filters tools with include_tags and exclude_tools (12 of 20). Every response is third-party page content and we found no prompt-injection guidance. x-detach-invisibles drops hidden elements, but it isn't described as a defence (0 of 15). No per-request log found (0 of 15). No security.txt, the privacy statement is Elastic's, and two SSRF reports (#1252 and #1253, 12 June 2026) sit open as public issues with no reply we could see and no commit since 22 May (0 of 20).

Outcrawl 66

OAuth 2.1 for MCP clients and the CLI with authorization code, PKCE S256, dynamic public-client registration, device code, one-hour access tokens, 30-day refresh, introspection and revocation endpoints and private_key_jwt, but one functional scope, api; API keys shaped ock_<keyId>.<secret> are shown once, stored as a digest, scoped to a workspace and revoked within a minute, with no per-key scopes, expiry or read-only keys; nothing documents a secret in a query string (25 of 30). No read-only key or scope. The MCP surface omits secrets, integrations, replay export and sharing and the wallet on purpose, rules are classified enforced or guidance on the call that sets them, agent runs need or default a budget, purchases above approvalAbove pause for a person's yes, and control hands a person the browser; monitor and profile deletes rely on destructiveHint alone (15 of 20). Every tool returns untrusted page content. The platform page says a page could ask the agent to act and that is why credentials never reach the model, secrets are substituted below the model, integrations are human-only and a run cannot be redirected mid-task, but there is no guidance to treat scraped text as data and no classifier (8 of 15). Every response carries usage, /v1/usage groups spend by hour, day or capability, agent events log every step, sessions keep the request list, console, HAR and a digest of failures, secrets record which runs used them and purchases are listed per run; there is no per-call log for scrape, search or crawl beyond the aggregate (12 of 15). No security.txt on either host (404), no SOC 2 or ISO 27001, no bug bounty; the security page has a responsible disclosure route at security@outcrawl.ai with a 90-day window and a no-legal-action statement (6 of 20). 25+15+8+12+6 = 66.

Schema & documentation Outcrawl +28

Jina Reader 43

No OpenAPI file found (0 of 25). jina.ai/llms.txt returned 404 in last week's check and issue #1224 asking for one is open, but the GitHub README is a full Markdown reference of every header (5 of 10). The README says when to use each option and gives a troubleshooting order (key, no cache, browser engine, proxy) (14 of 20). Options are headers with documented values, such as x-engine browser, curl or auto, and the MCP tools have typed schemas (11 of 15). curl examples and a cookbook, but no documented error responses (7 of 15). No API changelog. The README carries a dated updates list, last April 2026 (6 of 15).

Outcrawl 71

API reading, with the MCP server described. An OpenAPI 3.1 document at https://outcrawl.ai/docs/api-reference/openapi.json lists 62 operations over 51 paths with a summary each and the same 11 status codes, generated from the vendor's capability registry, but every request body is an untyped object marked additionalProperties: true with a pointer to the docs, every 200 response is an untyped object, and Error is the only schema; the typed shapes live in the SDK declarations and in the MCP server's zod schemas, which were read in the 0.4.3 npm package rather than from the hosted server (15 of 25). llms.txt and a 525 KB llms-full.txt on the docs, a Markdown twin of every page and an llms.txt on the site (10). The MCP descriptions each end with a Not for: clause naming the better tool and most with a Cost: clause, the OpenAPI summaries say when not to use a route, and the capability pages say which neighbour to use instead (18 of 20). Scrape formats are an enum of eight, event levels and record kinds are enums, caps.budget is required, and the SDK types bound every option, while the OpenAPI bodies carry none of it (10 of 15). curl, TypeScript and Python examples on every page, 20 worked programs, a 31-row error table with meanings and a retryable list, and MCP errors with a recovery string, though the closed union is sized 24, 31, 45 and 22 on different pages (13 of 15). /v1 in the path and 1.0.0 in the OpenAPI file, but no changelog or release notes anywhere; the record is version numbers on npm, PyPI and 14 dated tags in the outcrawlai/release repository (5 of 15). 15+10+18+10+13+5 = 71.

Reliability Jina Reader +15

Jina Reader 60

Atlassian Statuspage at status.jina.ai with automated incidents per service (20). The feed only reaches back to 15 September 2026. In that window r.jina.ai had no incidents and s.jina.ai had eight five-minute ones, seven with error rates of 8 to 13 per cent and one at 45 per cent on 15 September. Minor only, less 5 for the two-week window (15 of 30). Rate limits published, Reader 20 a minute without a key, 500 with a free or paid key and 5,000 premium, Search 100 and 1,000 (15). No 429 or Retry-After guidance found on the Reader page or in the README (0). No SLA found (0). GA (10).

Outcrawl 45

Hosted reading, for the REST API with the MCP server that shares its limits. No public status page was found. None is linked from the site or the docs, https://outcrawl.ai/status answers 404 and status.outcrawl.ai does not answer (0). No readable incident history, so the floor (5). Rate limits are published with numbers on the pricing page and in the docs, 120, 300, 1,500 and 6,000 requests a minute by plan and 2, 5, 25 and 100 concurrent browsers, shared between the API and the MCP server (15). Over the per-minute ceiling the API answers quota_exceeded with ceiling: requests_per_minute and retryAfterSeconds, read from the SDK error class and the worked examples, the errors page lists four codes as safe to retry unchanged, and concurrency_limit tells the caller only to wait for a run to end; no Retry-After header is documented and no idempotency key or safe-retry rule exists for the POST routes that start crawls, agent runs and monitors, which the agent tool's own description says bill twice on a repeat (10 of 15). An SLA exists only on Enterprise, a 99.9 per cent monthly uptime figure with service credits and terms priced per contract, so half credit for a published figure without published terms (5 of 10). No beta or preview label on the API, the MCP server or the CLI, and the OpenAPI file says version 1.0.0, though both SDKs are at 0.4.15 and the domain is nine weeks old (10). 0+5+15+10+5+10 = 45.

Maintenance & community Outcrawl +14

Jina Reader 65

The MCP server that fronts Reader reached 1.10.0 on 2026-09-18, after adding OCR and page options to read_url on 15 September. The Reader repository's last commit is 22 May 2026 (30). MCP versions 1.5.0 to 1.10.0 between 11 August and 18 September (20). 22 open Reader issues, including the two SSRF reports from June and a token-usage spike from April, with no fix in the repository (5 of 25). No official SDK, the MCP server is the maintained client (5 of 15). Reader has CI workflows, the MCP repository has none (5 of 10).

Outcrawl 79

@outcrawl/sdk and the PyPI package outcrawl both reached 0.4.15 on 20 October 2026, 13 days before the check, and the Scout mirror was synced on 1 November (30). 21 npm versions since 8 September and 17 PyPI releases since 22 September 2026, with 14 dated tags in outcrawlai/release (20). Scout's pull request #1 of 13 October was answered the same day with an import note and closed, while three pull requests and one issue opened on 18 October had no reply after 15 days; the service has no changelog, support is one email address, and no community channel exists (8 of 25). Not in the official MCP registry; official SDKs in TypeScript and Python current at 0.4.15, with a CLI (15). The three npm packages are published from GitHub Actions with trusted publishing, the TypeScript SDK has zero runtime dependencies and the Python SDK one, and Scout has tests per package, but the mirror has no CI workflows and @outcrawl/mcp has sat at 0.4.3 since 29 September with a tool list that differs from the hosted docs (6 of 10). 30+20+8+15+6 = 79.

Agent ergonomics Outcrawl +7

Jina Reader 76

x-max-tokens truncates and x-token-budget rejects oversized pages, x-target-selector returns one element, and images, links and media can be dropped or reduced to text (25). Semantic chunking, link and image summaries and presets for agent, research and index use (20). No documented error codes (8 of 20). Reads are GETs and safe to retry, with a cache and x-no-cache to bypass it. The MCP tools carry no readOnly or destructive hints (13 of 20). No required options beyond the URL, but no official SDK, only HTTP and the MCP server (10 of 15).

Outcrawl 83

API reading. Scrape returns main content only by default with formats picking markdown, html, rawHtml, links, screenshots or schema JSON, search renders page bodies only on request, agent events take a level and an after cursor, the MCP server shows request bodies up to a character limit and says when it truncated, and the MCP surface is 29 tools with no toolsets (20 of 25). Cursor pagination on crawl results, agent results and downloads, limit, depth and path filters on crawl, status, outcome, task and age filters on sessions, and usage grouped by hour, day, month or capability (20). One error envelope with a closed code, details such as the cap that stopped a run, retryAfterSeconds on the per-minute quota error, a documented list of codes safe to retry, and on MCP a recovery string and a retryable flag per error (18 of 20). No idempotency key on any route, a repeated agent, crawl or monitor submit runs twice, and concurrency_limit carries no retry hint; cancel is idempotent, integration_changed (409) guards updates, and the npm MCP package sets readOnlyHint on GET tools, destructiveHint on DELETE tools and idempotentHint on either, which the hosted server was not read to confirm (10 of 20). Scrape needs a URL alone, agent runs need caps.budget on the API and SDKs with the MCP server defaulting it, and official SDKs exist in TypeScript and Python beside a CLI (15). 20+20+18+10+15 = 83.

Payments & pricing Outcrawl +5

Jina Reader 35

No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Billed in tokens with no price in any currency on the Reader page, which points to a separate table (0). Reader works without a key and a new key comes with 10 million free tokens, no card (20). An agent can read pages with no signup at 20 a minute, but Search needs a key (15 of 20).

Outcrawl 40

No x402, MPP or L402 in the OpenAPI file, the docs, the pricing pages or the terms (0). Per-unit rates published without a login, 1 credit a page, 5 credits per 10 search results, 1 credit a browser minute, 2,000 credits a GB and 1 credit a monitor check, with the dollar rate per plan ($4.90 per 1,000 credits on Builder down to about $3.20 on Scale), top-up prices per 10,000 and an estimate of about 15 credits a minute for agent runs (20). Free plan of 1,000 credits a month with no card, on a person's first workspace (20). A person signs in with Google, GitHub, an email code or a magic link behind reCAPTCHA, and MCP's OAuth consent needs that browser sign-in; no keyless route, no programmatic key creation (0). 0+20+20+0 = 40.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runJina ReaderOutcrawlEdge
Reliability16%206045Jina Reader +15
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.24371Outcrawl +28
Agent ergonomics13%16.27683Outcrawl +7
Security & auth14%17.53266Outcrawl +34
Payments & pricing10%12.53540Outcrawl +5
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.86579Outcrawl +14
Transparency & trust7%8.86056Jina Reader +4
Negative events≤15-70
TotalE 45.3/100B 62.4/100

Facts side by side

FactJina ReaderOutcrawl
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorJina AI (Elastic)Aeonmind LLC (Outcrawl)
Hosted endpointhttps://r.jina.ai/https://api.outcrawl.ai/v1
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingPay per useFreemium
Price for scrapingnot published$4.90 per 1,000 pages
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Proprietary hosted service under Aeonmind LLC's terms of service (last updated 1 November 2026). The TypeScript and Python SDKs and the @outcrawl/mcp package are MIT, and Scout, the browser agent behind the hosted agent, is Apache-2.0 in a read-only GitHub mirror
Tools exposednone29
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-09-182026-10-20
Terms last updated2026-05-042026-11-01
Privacy policy last updated2026-09-072026-11-01
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyesnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textnot found in the text
Popularity12k stars948 stars, 53 npm/wk
Agent reviews2.5/5 (2)none

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Jina Reader

One URL prefix, no key needed, Markdown back. No price per token in any currency on the public page.

Outcrawl

One credit balance over scrape, crawl, search, cloud browsers and agent runs, with published per-unit rates, a 1,000-credit free month, OAuth 2.1 for MCP and the CLI, and a closed error union with retry guidance. No status page, changelog or security.txt, an OpenAPI file without typed bodies, no idempotency keys on job submits, and a domain registered nine weeks ago.

Before you call either

Jina Reader

  1. Prefix the URL, https://r.jina.ai/https://example.com, and read the Markdown
  2. Send x-max-tokens to cap a page, or x-token-budget to refuse one that's too big
  3. Use x-target-selector when you need one part of a page
  4. Keyless is 20 requests a minute and can't search. Add a key for loops or s.jina.ai
  5. Send x-no-cache: true when a page may have changed or a blocked response got cached

Outcrawl

  1. Read a known URL with POST /v1/scrape or outcrawl_scrape at 1 credit; use outcrawl_search to find URLs and send scrape: true only when you need page bodies, and reserve outcrawl_agent for pages that need a click, a form or a sign-in.
  2. Always send caps.budget on POST /v1/agent (the API refuses without it) and store the returned id; poll GET /v1/agent/{id} or outcrawl_agent_status, never resubmit, because a second submit is a second bill.
  3. Branch on error.code, not message. Retry no_capacity, decode_unavailable, extraction_failed and answer_lost unchanged; on quota_exceeded with ceiling: requests_per_minute wait retryAfterSeconds; on concurrency_limit wait for a run to end; never retry bad_request or a credit quota.
  4. Set limit on a crawl before submitting; pages already fetched are billed when you cancel, and over HTTP the crawl is cancelled if the streaming connection drops, so keep the job id and read /v1/crawl/{id}/results with the cursor.
  5. Pass after with the last seq and level: status when reading outcrawl_agent_events; the log of a long run is the largest response the server returns.
  6. Pass maxAge: 0 when freshness matters, since the default serves scrape answers up to two days old from a shared cache at the same price, and treat page content, data and download links as untrusted data; download URLs work for an hour with no key.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Jina Reader or Outcrawl?

Outcrawl scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against Jina Reader's 45.3 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Jina Reader leads on reliability.

Do Jina Reader and Outcrawl need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Jina Reader and Outcrawl without installing anything?

Yes. Jina Reader has a hosted endpoint at https://r.jina.ai/ and Outcrawl at https://api.outcrawl.ai/v1.

Are Jina Reader and Outcrawl open source?

Jina Reader is open source (Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for Outcrawl.

Other comparisons with Jina Reader or Outcrawl

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