# 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. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jina-reader-vs-scrapingbee
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jina-reader-vs-scrapingbee.md (~1,650 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jina-reader-vs-scrapingbee.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jina-reader-vs-scrapingbee.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
- Updated: 2026-10-05

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 Reader: grade E, 45.3/100, rank #402 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/jina-reader.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/jina-reader.json
- ScrapingBee: grade C, 59.3/100, rank #268 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/scrapingbee.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/scrapingbee.json

## 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

| Category | Weight | Jina Reader | ScrapingBee | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 60 | 70 | ScrapingBee +10 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 43 | 60 | ScrapingBee +17 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 76 | 68 | Jina Reader +8 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 32 | 37 | ScrapingBee +5 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 35 | 40 | ScrapingBee +5 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 65 | 85 | ScrapingBee +20 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 61 | 64 | ScrapingBee +3 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -7 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **45.3 · E** | **59.3 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Jina Reader | ScrapingBee |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Jina AI (Elastic) | ScrapingBee (Oxylabs group) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://r.jina.ai/` | `https://app.scrapingbee.com/api/v1/` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | none |
| Tools exposed | none | 18 |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-11 |
| Popularity | 12k stars | 132 stars, 49k npm/wk, 72k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (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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- [Firecrawl MCP vs Jina Reader](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-jina-reader.md)
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