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Head to head · Scraping · October 2026 research run

Jina Reader vs ScrapingBee

ScrapingBee has a score of 59.3 (C) against Jina Reader's 45.3 (E). Both do scraping. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 20 points.

Jina ReaderJina AI (Elastic) · HTTP API E45.3/100#402 of 452 ScrapingBeeScrapingBee (Oxylabs group) · HTTP API C59.3/100#268 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick Jina Reader for

  • agent ergonomics (+8)

Pick ScrapingBee for

  • reliability (+10)
  • schema & documentation (+17)
  • security & auth (+5)
  • payments & pricing (+5)
  • maintenance & community (+20)

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runJina ReaderScrapingBeeEdge
Reliability16%206070ScrapingBee +10
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.24360ScrapingBee +17
Agent ergonomics13%16.27668Jina Reader +8
Security & auth14%17.53237ScrapingBee +5
Payments & pricing10%12.53540ScrapingBee +5
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.86585ScrapingBee +20
Transparency & trust7%8.86164ScrapingBee +3
Negative events≤15-70
Total45.3 · E59.3 · C

Facts side by side

FactJina ReaderScrapingBee
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorJina AI (Elastic)ScrapingBee (Oxylabs group)
Hosted endpointhttps://r.jina.ai/https://app.scrapingbee.com/api/v1/
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingPay per usePaid
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0none
Tools exposednone18
Context cost (tools/list)n/an/a
p95 latencynot measured yetnot measured yet
Availability (30d)not measured yetnot measured yet
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
MCP registrynot listednot listed
Last release2026-09-182026-09-11
Popularity12k stars132 stars, 49k npm/wk, 72k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews2.5/5 (2)4/5 (2)

Verdicts

Jina Reader

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

ScrapingBee

Dedicated Google, Amazon, Walmart, YouTube, ChatGPT and Gemini endpoints next to the general HTML API. remote-mcp.txt says the hosted MCP only takes the key as ?api_key= in its URL.

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

ScrapingBee

  1. Send render_js=false for static pages and files. It cuts the cost from 5 credits to 1
  2. Use mode=auto with max_cost=25 to stop it escalating to 75-credit stealth requests
  3. Keep the MCP URL with ?api_key= out of logs and shared configs
  4. Back off exponentially on 429 from the MCP, since its concurrency is shared across customers
  5. Expect 404 and 410 from the target to be billed. Other failures aren't

Other comparisons with Jina Reader or ScrapingBee

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