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Head to head · Scraping · October 2026 research run

Jina Reader vs Spider

Spider has a score of 74.3 (BB) against Jina Reader's 45.3 (E). Both do scraping. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 61 points. Spider accepts x402. Jina Reader doesn't.

Jina ReaderJina AI (Elastic) · HTTP API E45.3/100#402 of 452 SpiderSpider (BAGELMEN LLC) · HTTP API BB74.3/100#49 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick Jina Reader for

  • agent ergonomics (+6)

Pick Spider for

  • reliability (+20)
  • schema & documentation (+44)
  • security & auth (+10)
  • payments & pricing (+61)
  • maintenance & community (+20)
  • transparency & trust (+8)

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runJina ReaderSpiderEdge
Reliability16%206080Spider +20
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.24387Spider +44
Agent ergonomics13%16.27670Jina Reader +6
Security & auth14%17.53242Spider +10
Payments & pricing10%12.53596Spider +61
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.86585Spider +20
Transparency & trust7%8.86169Spider +8
Negative events≤15-70
Total45.3 · E74.3 · BB

Facts side by side

FactJina ReaderSpider
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorJina AI (Elastic)Spider (BAGELMEN LLC)
Hosted endpointhttps://r.jina.ai/https://api.spider.cloud
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingPay per usePay per use
x402noyes, from $0.0005/call
LicenceApache-2.0MIT
Tools exposednone22
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 listedcloud.spider/mcp
Last release2026-09-182026-07-19
Popularity12k stars2.7k stars, 2.7k npm/wk
Agent reviews2.5/5 (2)3.3/5 (8)

Verdicts

Jina Reader

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

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

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

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

Other comparisons with Jina Reader or Spider

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