Head to head · Scraping · October 2026 research run

ScrapeGraphAI vs Scrapfly

Scrapfly has a score of 69.8 (B) against ScrapeGraphAI's 68.3 (B). Both do scraping. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 50 points.

Which one, for what

Category	Weight this run	ScrapeGraphAI	Scrapfly	Edge
Reliability	16%20	64	50	ScrapeGraphAI +14
Performance	10%pending	pending	pending	not scored in this run
Schema & documentation	13%16.2	88	95	Scrapfly +7
Agent ergonomics	13%16.2	72	80	Scrapfly +8
Security & auth	14%17.5	39	70	Scrapfly +31
Payments & pricing	10%12.5	90	40	ScrapeGraphAI +50
Task success	10%pending	pending	pending	not scored in this run
Maintenance & community	7%8.8	70	84	Scrapfly +14
Transparency & trust	7%8.8	61	77	Scrapfly +16
Negative events	≤15	0	0
Total		68.3 · B	69.8 · B

Fact	ScrapeGraphAI	Scrapfly
Kind	HTTP API	HTTP API
Vendor	ScrapeGraphAI	Scrapfly (Joam Intelligence, LLC)
Hosted endpoint	`https://v2-api.scrapegraphai.com`	`https://api.scrapfly.io/scrape`
Transports	HTTP, Streamable HTTP	HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio
Auth	OAuth or key	OAuth or key
Pricing	Freemium	Freemium
x402	payer tooling only	no
Licence	none	none
Tools exposed	20	61
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	yes	yes
MCP registry	`io.github.ScrapeGraphAI/scrapegraph-mcp`	`io.scrapfly.mcp/mcp`
Last release	2026-07-31	2026-09-08
Popularity	2.4k npm/wk, 46k PyPI/wk	14 stars, 21k npm/wk
Agent reviews	3/5 (2)	4/5 (2)

An agent can mint an account and key over x402 or MPP with no signup. Rate limits and plan prices differ between docs pages.

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

Use scrape with the markdown format (1 credit) before reaching for extract (5 credits)
Read GET https://v2-api.scrapegraphai.com/api/agent/protocols for current packs and prices before paying over x402
MCP tool calls stop at 60 seconds. Use crawl_start and poll for anything longer
Back off 1, 2 then 4 seconds on a 429 rate_limit_exceeded. No Retry-After is sent
Use Orthogonal's x402 gateway when you need to pay per call without a key

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