# ScrapeAtlas vs Spider

> Spider scores 75.4 (BB) 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-spider-cloud
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-spider-cloud.md (~2,900 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-spider-cloud.min.md (~780 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-spider-cloud.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

Spider scores 75.4 (BB) on agent readiness against ScrapeAtlas's 63 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. ScrapeAtlas leads on agent ergonomics and security & auth. Both do extraction. Spider accepts x402. ScrapeAtlas doesn't.

- 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
- Spider: grade BB, 75.4/100, rank #57 of 1226. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/spider-cloud.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/spider-cloud.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:
- Agent ergonomics, 76 against 70
- Security & auth, 55 against 42

Also in its favour:
- Free to start without a card

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

### Spider (BB)

Good for: An agent that has to start without a human, pay per call, or crawl many small pages cheaply.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 85 against 42
- Payments & pricing, 96 against 55
- Maintenance & community, 85 against 70
- Transparency & trust, 70 against 61

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- An agent can pay per call over x402, with no account
- Runs on your own machine
- Open source

Watch for: No security.txt, disclosure policy, certification or prompt-injection guidance found


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | ScrapeAtlas | Spider | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 42 | 85 | Spider +43 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 88 | 87 | ScrapeAtlas +1 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 76 | 70 | ScrapeAtlas +6 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 55 | 42 | ScrapeAtlas +13 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 55 | 96 | Spider +41 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 70 | 85 | Spider +15 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 61 | 70 | Spider +9 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **63 · B** | **75.4 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | ScrapeAtlas | Spider |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | OD. Media & Technology LLC | Spider (BAGELMEN LLC) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.scrapeatlas.com` | `https://api.spider.cloud` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | yes, from $0.0005/call |
| Licence | Proprietary service under ScrapeAtlas's Terms of Service. The @scrapeatlas/cli package on npm is MIT with no public source repository | MIT |
| Tools exposed | 373 | 21 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.OnlineDopamine/scrapeatlas` | `cloud.spider/mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-10-28 | 2026-07-19 |
| Terms last updated |  | 2026-09-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated |  | 2026-10-01 |
| Customer content may train models |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | not found in the text |
| Popularity | none | 2.7k stars, 2.7k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.3/5 (8) |

## 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.

**Spider.** Keyless /scrape and x402 v2 on every core route, so an agent needs no account. Operated by BAGELMEN LLC with no security.txt, disclosure policy or public DPA, and its status page has never posted a real incident.

## 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.

### 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 and gone from the hosted MCP
5. Honour Retry-After on 429. Keyless use allows 4 requests a minute

## Tutorials

- [Save a page as Markdown with Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/tutorials/spider-cloud/), for Spider

## Questions

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

Spider scores 75.4 (BB) on agent readiness against ScrapeAtlas's 63 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. ScrapeAtlas leads on agent ergonomics and security & auth.

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

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in. An agent can also pay Spider per call over x402, with no account.

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

Yes. ScrapeAtlas has a hosted endpoint at https://api.scrapeatlas.com and Spider at https://api.spider.cloud.

### Are ScrapeAtlas and Spider open source?

No open-source release is listed for ScrapeAtlas. Spider is open source (MIT).


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with ScrapeAtlas or Spider

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