# Crawl4AI vs Spider

Both turn web pages into clean data for AI. Spider bills each page by its size and CPU time, so you know the price after the call. Crawl4AI charges a fixed price by the work the page needed, never charges a failed call, and comes from the team that wrote the open-source crawler.
Facts last checked 12 Nov 2026

Crawl4AI vs Spider: the short answer
Crawl4AI charges a fixed price by the work each page needs ($0.10 per 1,000 plain pages) and nothing for a failed or blocked call; Spider says there is no per-page price, and its own pages give two answers on whether a failed page costs money. Crawl4AI gives 1,000 free credits every month and refunds within 14 days; Spider gives $0.25 of credits once, and a purchase is non-refundable. Crawl4AI runs in the EU, Singapore and the US with teams and an audit log from the $99 Builder plan; Spider's main region is the United States. Agents set Crawl4AI up from one message, /extract works on every plan with no add-on, and 93 recipes return named sites such as Amazon as rows for 1 credit.

## Which one fits

Different tools fit different jobs. Here is when each one is the better choice.

### Choose Spider if

- You need a live browser your code drives: connectOverCDP to their cloud browser, billed by the GB and the minute.
- You want a raw proxy endpoint to use in your own code, with 215M+ IPs across 199 countries.
- You want an official SDK in Python, JavaScript, Rust or Go.
- Most of your pages are small and plain, where billing by size can cost less: $0.002 to $0.01 per 100 pages in HTTP mode.

### Choose Crawl4AI if

- You build with AI agents: one message sets Crawl4AI up in Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Windsurf, Gemini CLI or OpenCode, and 17 MCP tools let the agent run recipes, price a call first and manage its budget.
- You want a fixed price per page that a finance team can budget, and nothing for a failed or blocked call.
- You need named sites as rows: 93 recipes, an Amazon product for 1 credit with the same columns every time. Spider's own Amazon page measures about $2.72 per 1,000 pages of Markdown text.
- You want JSON extraction on every plan; Spider's needs an AI Studio add-on from $6 a month on top of credits.
- You want money that stays yours: 1,000 free credits every month, 14-day refunds and extra credits that never expire.
- You need data in the EU, Singapore or the US, and a team with an audit log from Builder.
- You want to run it inside your network on the same engine, Apache 2.0.

For enterprise teams

## The controls your security team asks for

Crawl4AI's Enterprise plan next to Spider's. Spider's side restates its own pages; click a line to see the quote.

| Control | Crawl4AI Enterprise | Spider Enterprise |
|---|---|---|
| SSO (SAML, OIDC) | **✓ Yes** | Not published |
| SCIM user sync | **✓ Yes** | Not published |
| Teams, roles and audit log | **✓ From Builder ($99), no seat limit** | Audit logs on the Enterprise page |
| Zero data retention | **✓ Yes** | 2.5x credits self-serve; included on Enterprise |
| IP allowlist and key limits | **✓ Yes** | Not published |
| Static exit IPs | **✓ Yes** | Not published; every request uses a residential proxy |
| Where data is processed | EU, Singapore or US, your choice | Main region United States; some pages load on outside devices |
| Deployment | Cloud, dedicated fleet, inside your network, managed pipeline; one engine | Cloud, or the open-source crate with your own proxies |
| DPA and invoice billing | **✓ Every Enterprise plan** | DPA on request; invoices NET 30 |
| Refunds | 14 days, if no credits were used | None after delivery |
| Status page | Hourly uptime per service, public | Two components; one "example incident" on record |
| Uptime and response SLA | Typical: 99.9% a month; service down: first answer within 1 hour, 24/7; part broken: 4 business hours; a question: 1 business day; 5% of the month's fee back if missed, 10% under 99% | Enterprise: 99.9% uptime, incident under 1 hour; credits back not published |
| Support | A named engineer | 24/7 priority, reply under 2 hours |
| Security assurance | Controls monitored every day in Drata, with the evidence kept; dependencies watched for known vulnerabilities; SOC 2 audit by Sensiba under way, report target January 2027. Security pack on request: policies, audit status, DPA, questionnaire answers. | SOC 2 or ISO 27001: Not published |

## Same job, two calls

5 jobs an agent does every day. The call on each side, and the price of 1,000 of them at list. The label marks the side that costs less for that job.
**01 · One page to Markdown**a plain page
**Crawl4AI $0.10/ 1,000

```
curl https://api.crawl4ai.com/scrape \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
  -d '{"url":"https://example.com","format":"md"}'
```

0.1 credit, $0.08 per 1,000 on Builder. The price is fixed before the call.

**Spider costs less$0.02–$0.10/ 1,000

```
curl -X POST https://api.spider.cloud/scrape \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPIDER_API_KEY" \
  -d '{"url":"https://example.com",
       "return_format":"markdown"}'
```

$0.002 to $0.01 per 100 pages for an average page. Heavy pages cost more; you see the price after the call.

**02 · Your first 10,000 pages a month**plain pages, free account
**Crawl4AI costs less$0/ 1,000

```
curl https://api.crawl4ai.com/scrape \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
  -d '{"url":"https://example.com","format":"md"}'
```

The Free plan gives 1,000 credits every month with no card: 10,000 plain pages.

**Spider $0.02–$0.10/ 1,000

```
curl -X POST https://api.spider.cloud/scrape \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPIDER_API_KEY" \
  -d '{"url":"https://example.com",
       "return_format":"markdown"}'
```

No monthly allowance: 2,500 credits once, worth $0.25. After that, pay as you go.

**03 · A page that blocks bots**the page comes back blocked
**Crawl4AI costs less$0/ 1,000

```
curl https://api.crawl4ai.com/scrape \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
  -d '{"url":"https://hard-site.example",
       "proxy":"extra"}'
```

A page we cannot get costs nothing. A hard page we do get costs 2 credits.

**Spider Unclear/ 1,000

```
curl -X POST https://api.spider.cloud/scrape \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPIDER_API_KEY" \
  -d '{"url":"https://hard-site.example",
       "return_format":"markdown",
       "stealth":true}'
```

Their agent docs say "A failed page is not free"; their pricing page says "Failed requests cost $0". A stealth page's price: Not published.

**04 · An Amazon product as rows**title, price, rating, reviews
**Crawl4AI costs less$1.00/ 1,000

```
curl https://api.crawl4ai.com/recipes/amazon-product \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
  -d '{"product":"<asin>"}'
```

A recipe: 2 units × 0.5 credit. ASIN, title, price, rating, review count and more, the same columns every time; one of 93.

**Spider ≈ $2.72/ 1,000

```
curl -X POST https://api.spider.cloud/scrape \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPIDER_API_KEY" \
  -d '{"url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/<asin>",
       "return_format":"markdown"}'
```

Their own Amazon page measures ≈ $2.72 per 1,000 pages, returned as Markdown text, not columns.

**05 · Structured JSON from a page**described in plain words, filled by a model
**Crawl4AI costs less$1.87/ 1,000

```
curl https://api.crawl4ai.com/extract \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
  -d '{"url":"https://news.ycombinator.com",
       "instruction":"the top stories"}'
```

Median of real calls this week: 0.5 credit for the page plus the model's tokens. Every plan, no add-on.

**Spider ~$10 + plan/ 1,000

```
curl -X POST https://api.spider.cloud/ai/scrape \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPIDER_API_KEY" \
  -d '{"url":"https://news.ycombinator.com",
       "prompt":"the top stories"}'
```

About $0.01 a call, plus AI Studio, an Alpha add-on from $6 a month at 1 request a second. Credits still pay for the page.

## Crawl4AI vs Spider, side by side

Each Spider cell restates Spider's own pages, read on 12 Nov 2026. Click it to see the quote and the page. "Not published" means those pages say nothing about it, not that it is missing.

|  | Crawl4AI Cloud | Spider |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing |  |  |
| How you pay | Credits in every plan: Free, Starter $10, Builder $99, Scale $499 | Bytes and CPU time: $1 a GB + $0.0001 a CPU minute |
| 1,000 plain / browser / hard pages | $0.10 / $0.50 / $2.00 | $0.02–$0.10 / $0.035–$0.155 / not published (average page) |
| Failed calls | Free, blocked pages included | Two answers: "not free" (llms.txt) and "$0" (pricing) |
| A page already cached | Half price | Not published |
| Extra credits | Never expire | Balance never expires |
| Refunds | 14 days, if no credits were used | None after delivery |
| What you get back |  |  |
| Formats | Markdown, HTML, links, media, metadata, tables; engine and cache on every answer | Raw, Markdown, text, XML, bytes, screenshot; no html value |
| Whole site | /site deep crawl (500 pages a call); /scan up to 50,000 URLs | /crawl; no limit set means up to your whole balance |
| Search | /search 1 credit; Google results as data with /serp | About $0.001 a search |
| Named sites | 93 recipes; an Amazon product or a LinkedIn profile 1 credit | 146 scraper pages, priced by page size |
| Documents | PDF, Word and Excel; a PDF costs one page | /transform: up to 10 credits a PDF page |
| Extraction | /extract on every plan; median 1.87 credits a call | AI Studio add-on (Alpha) from $6 a month |
| Agents |  |  |
| MCP | Hosted, no install; key or OAuth; 17 tools | Hosted; OAuth or key; 21 tools |
| Setup | One message sets it up in 7 coding agents | An agent skill file |
| Agent budget | Estimate, balance, spend cap and top-up as tools; cost on every answer | A credit balance tool; price before the call not published |
| Open source |  |  |
| License | Apache 2.0, 87,236 GitHub stars | MIT, 2,842 GitHub stars |
| Self-host | The same engine as the Cloud | Bring your own proxies; no AI extraction |

Crawl4AI's prices come from its live price list, GET /v1/prices. Prices change; check each product's own pricing page before you decide.

The trade-off

## What each one does better

### Where Spider does best

1. **Live browser sessions.** A cloud browser your code drives over CDP, billed by the GB and the minute.
2. **A raw proxy endpoint.** Residential exits you can use from your own code.
3. **SDKs in four languages.** Python, JavaScript, Rust and Go, and a CLI.
4. **Small plain pages.** Billing by size can cost less when every page is light.

### Where Crawl4AI is the better choice

1. **A price you know first.** 0.1 credit for a plain page, fixed before the call, nothing for a failed or blocked call, half price for a page we already hold.
2. **Made for agents.** One message sets it up; 17 MCP tools cover recipes, jobs, cost estimates and the budget.
3. **Ready data from named sites.** 93 recipes, Amazon and LinkedIn included, return fixed columns for about 1 credit; /extract on every plan.
4. **Built for enterprise.** Three regions, teams and an audit log from Builder, SSO and SCIM, and 14-day refunds.

Switch in one prompt

## Move your Spider calls in minutes

Paste this into Claude Code, Cursor or Codex in your project. It finds your Spider calls and moves them to Crawl4AI, one endpoint at a time, and keeps both working until you check the results.
Move this project's Spider calls to Crawl4AI Cloud. Read https://crawl4ai.com/llms.txt first. 1. Find every call to the Spider API or SDK. 2. Map each one: POST /scrape → POST /scrape · stealth: true → proxy: extra · POST /crawl → POST /site · POST /links → POST /scan · POST /search → GET /search · /serp · /ai/scrape, /ai/crawl → POST /extract · css_extraction_map → POST /extract with a schema · /fetch/{domain}/{path} → POST /recipes/{name}. 3. Read the key from CRAWL4AI_API_KEY (YOUR_CRAWL4AI_API_KEY). 4. Keep the old path behind a flag; compare 20 real URLs on both; show me the diff.

| Spider |  | Crawl4AI |
|---|---|---|
| POST /scrape | → | POST /scrape |
| stealth: true | → | proxy: extra |
| POST /crawl | → | POST /site |
| POST /links | → | POST /scan |
| POST /search | → | GET /search · /serp |
| /ai/scrape, /ai/crawl | → | POST /extract |
| css_extraction_map | → | POST /extract with a schema |
| /fetch/{domain}/{path} | → | POST /recipes/{name} |

From both products' docs, 12 Nov 2026.

## Using both

Not either-or. Both speak MCP, so one agent can hold both. A team could keep Spider for a live browser its code drives or a raw proxy endpoint, and use Crawl4AI for recipes, extraction, Google results and EU data.

## Frequently asked questions
How much does Spider cost?

Spider bills $1 per GB of page data plus $0.0001 per CPU minute, so the price of a page depends on its size; its compare page says "There is no per-page price". Its guide puts 1,000 average pages at $0.02 to $0.16, and its Amazon page at about $2.72 per 1,000. Crawl4AI prints a fixed price: $0.10 per 1,000 plain pages and $0.50 per 1,000 browser pages, known before the call.
Does Spider charge for failed requests?

Spider's pages give two answers. Its pricing page says "Failed requests cost $0"; its llms.txt, written for agents, says "A failed page is not free". Crawl4AI charges nothing for a failed call, a blocked page included.
Does Spider have a free plan?

Spider has no monthly free allowance: it gives 2,500 credits once, worth $0.25, plus a rate-limited keyless /scrape. Crawl4AI gives 1,000 credits every month with no card, and 20 credits with no signup.
Does Spider give refunds?

Spider's terms say a purchase "is non-refundable and non-transferable". On Crawl4AI, a first plan payment or an extra-credit purchase is refundable within 14 days if none of its credits were used.
Where does Spider process data? Does it have EU data residency?

Spider's privacy policy says "Our main region is the United States", and that some pages load on devices run by people outside Spider. Crawl4AI runs in the EU, Singapore and the US, keeps account and billing data in the EU, and offers APAC residency on request.
Can Spider extract JSON from a page?

Yes, with a prompt on its /ai routes, which need an AI Studio subscription, labeled Alpha, from $6 a month on top of credits. Crawl4AI's /extract works on every plan; the measured median is 1.87 credits a call.
Is Crawl4AI self-hosted only, with no published price?

No. Spider's page about Crawl4AI says the Cloud API is in closed beta with no published price, and that is out of date. Crawl4AI Cloud is live in three regions with a public price list: 100,000 plain pages cost $10. It has a hosted MCP server, 93 recipes, and 87,236 GitHub stars on the open-source engine (GitHub, 2026-11-12). Spider's benchmark tested the self-hosted library without proxies, not the Cloud.

Sources and method

1. [Spider pricing ↗](https://spider.cloud/pricing)
2. [Spider pricing guide ↗](https://spider.cloud/guides/pricing-and-plans/)
3. [Spider compare page and FAQ ↗](https://spider.cloud/compare/)
4. [Spider llms.txt and llms-full.txt ↗](https://spider.cloud/llms.txt)
5. [Spider privacy policy ↗](https://spider.cloud/privacy/)
6. [Spider terms ↗](https://spider.cloud/terms)
7. [Spider enterprise ↗](https://spider.cloud/enterprise/)
8. [Spider AI Studio pricing ↗](https://spider.cloud/ai/pricing/)
9. [Spider vs Crawl4AI (their page) ↗](https://spider.cloud/blog/spider-vs-crawl4ai/)
10. [Crawl4AI prices ↗](https://crawl4ai.com/v1/prices)
11. [Crawl4AI legal ↗](https://crawl4ai.com/legal/)

We read these pages on 12 Nov 2026. Crawl4AI's facts come from its live price list, docs and terms. Something wrong or out of date? Write to hello@crawl4ai.com and we fix it.