# ScrapingBee vs Spider

> Spider has a score of 74.3 (BB) against ScrapingBee's 59.3 (C). Both do scraping. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 56 points. Spider accepts x402. ScrapingBee doesn't. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapingbee-vs-spider-cloud
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapingbee-vs-spider-cloud.md (~1,700 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapingbee-vs-spider-cloud.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapingbee-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
- Updated: 2026-10-05

Spider has a score of 74.3 (BB) against ScrapingBee's 59.3 (C). Both do scraping. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 56 points. Spider accepts x402. ScrapingBee doesn't.

- ScrapingBee: grade C, 59.3/100, rank #268 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/scrapingbee.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/scrapingbee.json
- Spider: grade BB, 74.3/100, rank #49 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/spider-cloud.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/spider-cloud.json

## Which one, for what

Pick ScrapingBee for nothing in particular (no category where it leads by five points or more).

Pick Spider for reliability (+10), schema & documentation (+27), security & auth (+5), payments & pricing (+56), transparency & trust (+5).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | ScrapingBee | Spider | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 70 | 80 | Spider +10 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 60 | 87 | Spider +27 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 68 | 70 | Spider +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 37 | 42 | Spider +5 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 96 | Spider +56 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 85 | 85 | even |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 64 | 69 | Spider +5 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **59.3 · C** | **74.3 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | ScrapingBee | Spider |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | ScrapingBee (Oxylabs group) | Spider (BAGELMEN LLC) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://app.scrapingbee.com/api/v1/` | `https://api.spider.cloud` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Paid | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | yes, from $0.0005/call |
| Licence | none | MIT |
| Tools exposed | 18 | 22 |
| 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 | not listed | `cloud.spider/mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-09-11 | 2026-07-19 |
| Popularity | 132 stars, 49k npm/wk, 72k PyPI/wk | 2.7k stars, 2.7k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 4/5 (2) | 3.3/5 (8) |

## Verdicts

**ScrapingBee.** Dedicated Google, Amazon, Walmart, YouTube, ChatGPT and Gemini endpoints next to the general HTML API. remote-mcp.txt says the hosted MCP only takes the key as ?api_key= in its URL.

**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

### ScrapingBee

1. Send render_js=false for static pages and files. It cuts the cost from 5 credits to 1
2. Use mode=auto with max_cost=25 to stop it escalating to 75-credit stealth requests
3. Keep the MCP URL with ?api_key= out of logs and shared configs
4. Back off exponentially on 429 from the MCP, since its concurrency is shared across customers
5. Expect 404 and 410 from the target to be billed. Other failures aren't

### 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

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