# ScrapeAtlas vs Scrapfly

> Scrapfly scores 69.6 (B) to ScrapeAtlas's 63 (B) for extraction. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-scrapfly
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-scrapfly.md (~2,750 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-scrapfly.min.md (~780 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-scrapfly.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
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-10-30

Scrapfly scores 69.6 (B) on agent readiness against ScrapeAtlas's 63 (B), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. ScrapeAtlas leads on payments & pricing. Both do extraction.

- ScrapeAtlas: grade B, 63/100, rank #481 of 1226. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/scrapeatlas.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/scrapeatlas.json
- Scrapfly: grade B, 69.6/100, rank #201 of 1226. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/scrapfly.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/scrapfly.json
- Best web scraping and crawling APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/web-scrapers/index.md
- All 242 scrapers comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/web-scrapers/index.md

## Which one, for what

### ScrapeAtlas (B)

Good for: Agents that need structured public data from a named social, video, forum, marketplace or prediction-market platform, such as a creator's profile and recent posts, a thread's comments, a product's reviews or a market's order book, paid per successful request without a subscription.

Ahead on:
- Payments & pricing, 55 against 40

Watch for: No status page or incident history was found, and the terms promise no uptime, throughput or continued availability of an endpoint

### Scrapfly (B)

Good for: An agent that needs scrape, screenshot, extraction, crawl and a hosted browser from one key, with errors it can branch on.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 50 against 42
- Schema & documentation, 95 against 88
- Security & auth, 70 against 55
- Maintenance & community, 84 against 70
- Transparency & trust, 75 against 61

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine

Watch for: The open-source MCP server registers 61 tools at once, a heavy tools/list


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | ScrapeAtlas | Scrapfly | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 42 | 50 | Scrapfly +8 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 88 | 95 | Scrapfly +7 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 76 | 80 | Scrapfly +4 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 55 | 70 | Scrapfly +15 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 55 | 40 | ScrapeAtlas +15 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 70 | 84 | Scrapfly +14 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 61 | 75 | Scrapfly +14 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **63 · B** | **69.6 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | ScrapeAtlas | Scrapfly |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | OD. Media & Technology LLC | Scrapfly (Joam Intelligence, LLC) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.scrapeatlas.com` | `https://api.scrapfly.io/scrape` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under ScrapeAtlas's Terms of Service. The @scrapeatlas/cli package on npm is MIT with no public source repository | none |
| Tools exposed | 373 | 61 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.OnlineDopamine/scrapeatlas` | `io.scrapfly.mcp/mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-10-28 | 2026-09-08 |
| Terms last updated |  | 2026-09-30 |
| Privacy policy last updated |  | 2026-05-14 |
| Customer content may train models |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | not found in the text |
| Popularity | none | 14 stars, 21k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 4/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**ScrapeAtlas.** An OpenAPI 3.1 file with 386 operations, typed parameters and a uniform failure object, published limits of 120 requests a minute and 4 concurrent, and 1 credit per successful request with failed calls free. No status page, security.txt or SDKs, the MCP server is a preview with 373 tools, and the product is five weeks old.

**Scrapfly.** The error catalogue documents HTTP status, retry behaviour and billing for over 100 codes. The MCP server loads 61 tools at once.

## Before you call either

### ScrapeAtlas

1. Send the key as `x-api-key` on https://api.scrapeatlas.com and check `status` on every HTTP 200; `partial` is usable data with `coverage.warnings`, `failed` and `challenged` carry `failure.code`.
2. Retry only on `upstream_rate_limited`, `timeout` and `busy`, after the `retry-after` on a 429. Stay under 120 requests a minute and 4 concurrent per account.
3. Pass the returned `cursor` back unchanged for the next page, and use `since` and `until` (ISO 8601 or Unix seconds) where listed; each page costs another credit.
4. Each platform has its own response schema, so read the endpoint's response fields before mapping; unknown values are `null`, never 0.
5. For MCP, connect to https://api.scrapeatlas.com/mcp over Streamable HTTP with `Authorization: Bearer` and expect 373 tools; the two account tools and failed calls cost 0 credits.

### Scrapfly

1. Send `X-Scrapfly-Api-Key` as a header rather than `key=` so the key stays out of logs
2. Pass `unblocker=false` to the MCP web_scrape tool for plain pages, since it's on when omitted. `asp` is the deprecated alias
3. Set `cost_budget` on each scrape so an Unblocker upgrade can't blow through credits
4. Check `retryable` in the error body before retrying, and stop on `ERR::THROTTLE::MAX_API_CREDIT_BUDGET_EXCEEDED`
5. Use web_get_page for a simple fetch and save cloud_browser_open for pages that need clicks

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, ScrapeAtlas or Scrapfly?

Scrapfly scores 69.6 (B) on agent readiness against ScrapeAtlas's 63 (B), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. ScrapeAtlas leads on payments & pricing.

### Do ScrapeAtlas and Scrapfly need an API key?

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

### Can an agent call ScrapeAtlas and Scrapfly without installing anything?

Yes. ScrapeAtlas has a hosted endpoint at https://api.scrapeatlas.com and Scrapfly at https://api.scrapfly.io/scrape.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-scrapfly.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-scrapfly.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "scrapeatlas", "b": "scrapfly"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare scrapeatlas scrapfly`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/scrapeatlas.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/scrapfly.json

## Other comparisons with ScrapeAtlas or Scrapfly

- [Bright Data vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-scrapfly.md)
- [Context.dev vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/context-dev-vs-scrapfly.md)
- [Jina Reader vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jina-reader-vs-scrapfly.md)
- [Olostep vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-scrapfly.md)
- [Oxylabs Web Scraper API vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/oxylabs-web-scraper-vs-scrapfly.md)
- [Scrape.do vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrape-do-vs-scrapfly.md)
- [ScrapeGraphAI vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapegraphai-vs-scrapfly.md)
- [Scrapeless vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeless-vs-scrapfly.md)
- [ScraperAPI vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scraperapi-vs-scrapfly.md)
- [Scrapewise vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapewise-vs-scrapfly.md)
- [Scrapfly vs ScrapingAnt](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapfly-vs-scrapingant.md)
- [Scrapfly vs ScrapingBee](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapfly-vs-scrapingbee.md)
- [Scrapfly vs Scrapingdog](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapfly-vs-scrapingdog.md)
- [Scrapfly vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapfly-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Scrapfly vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapfly-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Scrapfly vs Zyte API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapfly-vs-zyte.md)
- [Context.dev vs ScrapeAtlas](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/context-dev-vs-scrapeatlas.md)
- [Diffbot vs ScrapeAtlas](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-scrapeatlas.md)
- [Diffbot vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-scrapfly.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs ScrapeAtlas](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-scrapeatlas.md)
- [jevcrawl vs ScrapeAtlas](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-scrapeatlas.md)
- [Olostep vs ScrapeAtlas](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-scrapeatlas.md)
- [Oxylabs Web Scraper API vs ScrapeAtlas](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/oxylabs-web-scraper-vs-scrapeatlas.md)
- [ScrapeAtlas vs ScrapeGraphAI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-scrapegraphai.md)
- [ScrapeAtlas vs ScraperAPI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-scraperapi.md)
- [ScrapeAtlas vs Scrapewise](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-scrapewise.md)
- [ScrapeAtlas vs ScrapingAnt](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-scrapingant.md)
- [ScrapeAtlas vs ScrapingBee](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-scrapingbee.md)
- [ScrapeAtlas vs Scrapingdog](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-scrapingdog.md)
- [ScrapeAtlas vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [ScrapeAtlas vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-zenrows.md)
- [ScrapeAtlas vs Zyte API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-zyte.md)
- [Apify MCP Server vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apify-mcp-vs-scrapfly.md)
- [jevcrawl vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-scrapfly.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-scrapfly.md)

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Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp