Head to head · Extraction · October 2026 research run

Outcrawl vs Qovia

Outcrawl scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against Qovia's 61.2 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Qovia leads on schema & documentation and payments & pricing. Both do extraction.

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

Which one, for what

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

  • Reliability, 45 against 40
  • Agent ergonomics, 83 against 77
  • Security & auth, 66 against 60
  • Transparency & trust, 56 against 30

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

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

Qovia C

Best for Agents that need structured public data from Chinese platforms (Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Weibo, Bilibili, Kuaishou, Zhihu, WeChat official accounts, Taobao and JD reviews) or the Xingtu and Pugongying creator marketplaces, with TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, X and Reddit beside them, paid per successful call from a prepaid balance.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 86 against 71
  • Payments & pricing, 55 against 40

Watch for

No status page, incident history or SLA; the terms promise nothing about uptime and the Python client is the only retry guidance beyond Retry-After

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.

Transparency & trust Outcrawl +26

Outcrawl 56

Closed hosted service under terms last updated 1 November 2026 that name Aeonmind LLC, trading as Outcrawl, Delaware law and a liability cap; the SDKs and the MCP package are MIT and Scout, the agent behind the hosted agent, is Apache-2.0 in a read-only mirror of a private repository (20 of 30). The privacy policy (1 November 2026) and the security page (8 October 2026) agree with each other and the docs on recordings, secrets, downloads and subprocessors. Recordings are on by default and hold request bodies, cookies and form data, deleted after a plan period shown only in the console, downloads are kept 7 days, run files are destroyed at run end, PostHog site recordings go after 30 days, and account data is kept for a limited unspecified period after closure; no DPA was found and no recording retention figure is published (20 of 30). No deprecation policy or dated notices; the terms say prices may change for future usage and material changes are emailed, and no changelog exists (3 of 20). Twelve subprocessors named with their purposes, infrastructure mainly in the United States with Cloudflare edge locations, analytics only after consent, but the AI model providers and captcha-solving services that see page content are unnamed (15 of 20). 20+20+3+15 = 58.

Qovia 30

Closed service. The Terms of Service is one paragraph that names no legal entity, address or liability terms, says Delaware law governs and that the page is a summary with the signed agreement governing; the repository's client is MIT. Between the closed and unclear bands (7 of 30). The privacy policy is one paragraph. Account information is used to deliver and bill, personal information is not sold, requests and results are not resold, deletion requests go to the support mailbox, and the agreement governs where it differs. No retention periods, no subprocessors, no DPA, and no statement about the cache the prov.source flag implies; the SECURITY.md repeats the same points (8 of 30). A 410 endpoint_disabled code exists for retired endpoints and the changelog is dated, but there is no deprecation policy or notice period and nothing is marked deprecated (5 of 20). Stripe is named on the pricing page as the card and Alipay processor; no other provider, data location or transfer basis is stated (3 of 20). 7+8+5+3 = 23.

Schema & documentation Qovia +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.

Qovia 86

An OpenAPI 3.1.0 file (version 0.1.0, 1 MB) is public at qovia.ai/openapi.json with 144 paths and 144 operations, two security schemes, typed query parameters, a response example on every operation and the error responses declared on each. The data payload itself is typed only as object, array or null with per-endpoint examples, and the MCP call_endpoint tool takes a free params object, so 22 of 25 (22). llms.txt (75 KB, one line per endpoint with price and status) and llms-full.txt (331 KB, the whole documentation as text) are served, and the quickstart's billing, limits and error sections are in both (10). Every operation has a summary and a description; most say what the data holds, how to page, which ids to pass, which fields are unavailable and what answers 404 or empty, and the MCP server's instructions say to find, read then call. Guidance on when not to use an endpoint is thin, mostly pointers such as replies coming from another endpoint (16 of 20). 321 parameters, 75 with enums, patterns on ids, min and max on strings and integers, 117 operations with one required parameter and 16 with none, the POST body typed with additionalProperties false, and unknown parameters rejected with 400 (14 of 15). A response example on all 144 operations, 20 error codes with every message variant listed, response headers documented per error, and cURL, Python, JavaScript and raw HTTP samples; the examples are catalogue samples the docs say are not live data (14 of 15). Paths are under /v1, a 410 endpoint_disabled code exists for retired endpoints, and the changelog is dated, but it has two days (21 and 22 October 2026), nothing is marked deprecated and no notice period is stated (10 of 15). 22+10+16+14+14+10 = 86.

Payments & pricing Qovia +15

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.

Qovia 55

No x402, MPP or L402 on Qovia's own endpoints; USDT on TRC-20 is a top-up method from a console session, not a machine payment protocol. The vendor's five Actors on the Apify Store under the profile qovia (Qovia Data, the same Telegram handle and mailbox as the site), such as the Xingtu Actor at $0.01 to $0.06 a section, can be paid through Apify, whose prepaid token is sold over x402, so partial credit for a third-party route on part of the catalogue (10 of 40). Per-call prices are published without a login, per endpoint in the OpenAPI file, llms.txt and the docs, search at $5 and raw endpoints from $0.5 to $19.5 per 1,000, with the tier rule and payment fees stated (20). 50 trial calls for a new account, counted only when a call returns data; the quickstart says to top up when they run out and the docs ask for no card at sign-up, though no account was created to confirm it (20). A person signs up in a browser and creates a key; the MCP catalogue tools work without a key but data calls do not, and the Apify route reaches four platforms without a Qovia account (5 of 20). 10+20+20+5 = 55.

Agent ergonomics Outcrawl +6

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.

Qovia 77

API reading. Responses come in fixed page sizes per endpoint, from about 5 comments on Xiaohongshu to 100 Fliggy reviews, with limit only on Bilibili danmaku and no field selection; the record shape is compact and shared across posts, notes and videos. The MCP server loads four tools by default, keeps the catalogue out of context until search_endpoints and get_endpoint are called, and ?tools= selects platforms or everything, which on the MCP reading would score 25 (18 of 25). Cursor pagination with has_more on most lists, search_id on Douyin and Zhihu search, page numbers on Weibo, Xiaohongshu and Bilibili, sort options on several, and the cross-platform search filters by platform, content type, sentiment and whole-day date windows up to 90 days (17 of 20). One error object with 20 codes, request_id on every answer, the retryable set marked, refunded codes separated from never-charged ones, and MCP tool errors carrying error.code, the HTTP status and retry_after_seconds (19 of 20). All calls are reads, failed and empty calls are refunded, Retry-After is declared and the Python client retries; no readOnlyHint or other annotation appears in the vendor's 28 October tools/list snapshot (14 of 20). One required parameter on 117 of 144 operations and defaults set on the server, but the only official SDK is the Python client; Node and curl are examples (9 of 15). 18+17+19+14+9 = 77.

Security & auth Outcrawl +6

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.

Qovia 60

API keys with scopes chosen at creation (every endpoint, search, every raw endpoint or one of 24 platform groups), an optional expiry, revocation in the console and hashed storage; the docs say the key is read from the Authorization or x-api-key header only, never the URL or a cookie, and 30 failed authentications from one IP in a minute are throttled. No OAuth and no rotation feature beyond creating another key (24 of 30). The whole surface is read-only retrieval, scopes restrict a key to platforms, the two MCP catalogue tools need no key, and the docs and SECURITY.md tell users to give AI tools a separate scoped key (17 of 20). Every response is third-party platform text, and the only related statement is that error messages never contain the data source's own text; nothing on treating returned content as untrusted (3 of 15). request_id is the usage record ID on every answer, the console lists every charge in a usage log, X-Qovia-Charged and X-Qovia-Balance headers report each call, and GET /v1/account returns the key's scopes and balance at no charge; no exportable audit log or per-call endpoint was found (11 of 15). No security.txt on qovia.ai or api.qovia.ai (404), no bug bounty, SOC 2 or ISO 27001; the repository's SECURITY.md names a Telegram handle and a mailbox for reports covering both hosts (5 of 20). 24+17+3+11+5 = 60.

Reliability Outcrawl +5

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.

Qovia 40

Hosted reading, for the REST API with the MCP server described. No public status page was found. https://qovia.ai/status/ answers 404, status.qovia.ai does not resolve and neither the docs nor the footer links one (0). No readable incident history, so 5 by the rubric (5). Limits are published with numbers on the quickstart's rate-limits section, 60 requests a minute per account before the first top-up and 600 after on a sliding 60-second window, with X-RateLimit-Limit and X-RateLimit-Remaining headers, a 64 KiB body cap, an empty-call throttle (50 calls in 10 minutes with over 80 per cent empty, not found or rejected) and a per-second cap per endpoint without a number (15). Retry-After is declared on too_many_auth_failures, rate_limited, too_many_unbilled, endpoint_busy and upstream_busy, the error table marks the retryable codes, the docs say a 503 endpoint_unavailable carries none and will not clear, and the Python client retries 429 and 503 honouring the header. Every operation is a read, including POST /v1/search, and a failed or timed-out call is refunded, so idempotency keys are not needed (15). No SLA. The terms summary says nothing about uptime and the pricing FAQ excludes outages, rate limits and platform changes from refunds; the 11 September 2026 archived home page advertised a 99.95 per cent enterprise SLA that the current pages have dropped (0). The endpoints are sold and labelled Live on the docs and coverage pages, but every one of the 143 carries x-qovia-status beta in the OpenAPI file, the API version is 0.1.0 and the MCP server reports 0.1.0 (5 of 10). 0+5+15+15+0+5 = 40.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runOutcrawlQoviaEdge
Reliability16%204540Outcrawl +5
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27186Qovia +15
Agent ergonomics13%16.28377Outcrawl +6
Security & auth14%17.56660Outcrawl +6
Payments & pricing10%12.54055Qovia +15
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87977Outcrawl +2
Transparency & trust7%8.85630Outcrawl +26
Negative events≤1500
TotalB 62.4/100C 61.2/100

Facts side by side

FactOutcrawlQovia
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorAeonmind LLC (Outcrawl)Qovia
Hosted endpointhttps://api.outcrawl.ai/v1https://api.qovia.ai
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumPay per use
x402nono
LicenceProprietary 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 mirrorProprietary hosted service under a one-paragraph Terms of Service summary that defers to a signed agreement. The qovia/qovia-mcp repository (setup guide, examples, Python client) and the qovia package on PyPI are MIT; the service's source is not public
Tools exposed29141
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registrynot listedai.qovia/qovia
Last release2026-10-202026-10-28
Terms last updated2026-11-01not read yet
Privacy policy last updated2026-11-01not read yet
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot read yet
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot read yet
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textnot read yet
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textnot read yet
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textnot read yet
Popularity948 stars, 53 npm/wk0 stars

Verdicts

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.

Qovia

An OpenAPI 3.1 file with 144 operations, one envelope and 20 error codes, per-endpoint prices with failed and empty calls refunded, scoped keys and a four-tool MCP server that keeps the catalogue out of context. No status page, no legal entity, one-paragraph terms and privacy pages, and a product ten days old at the check.

Before you call either

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.

Qovia

  1. Send Authorization: Bearer sk-qovia-... to https://api.qovia.ai and check meta.empty on every HTTP 200; data may be null or an empty structure and nothing is charged for it.
  2. Branch on error.code, never on message. Retry only rate_limited, too_many_unbilled, endpoint_busy, upstream_busy and too_many_auth_failures after Retry-After; endpoint_unavailable has none and will not clear.
  3. Stay under 60 requests a minute (600 after the first top-up) across every key on the account, and keep empty or not-found calls under 80 per cent of the last 10 minutes or expect 429 too_many_unbilled.
  4. Pass the previous page's cursor (and search_id on Douyin and Zhihu search) back unchanged and stop when has_more is false; each page is a separate charge, and unknown parameters answer 400.
  5. For MCP, connect to https://api.qovia.ai/mcp over Streamable HTTP; call search_endpoints then get_endpoint before call_endpoint, or add ?tools=douyin,kuaishou for typed direct tools. Catalogue tools need no key.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Outcrawl or Qovia?

Outcrawl scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against Qovia's 61.2 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Qovia leads on schema & documentation and payments & pricing.

Do Outcrawl and Qovia need an API key?

Outcrawl takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Qovia needs an API key.

Can an agent call Outcrawl and Qovia without installing anything?

Yes. Outcrawl has a hosted endpoint at https://api.outcrawl.ai/v1 and Qovia at https://api.qovia.ai.

Other comparisons with Outcrawl or Qovia

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