Agentifact assessment — independently scored, not sponsored. Last verified Mar 6, 2026.
Spider
Spider is a high-performance web crawler and scraping API built in Rust, designed as the web data layer for AI agents and LLMs. It supports HTTP, Chrome CDP, and WebDriver rendering modes, and includes built-in stealth profiles that automatically handle Cloudflare, Akamai, and PerimeterX. Spider outputs clean Markdown for direct LLM consumption and offers pay-as-you-go pricing with no subscriptions. At roughly $0.48–$0.65 per 1,000 pages with no credit multipliers, it is one of the most cost-effective scraping APIs available.
Viable option — review the tradeoffs
You need to ingest entire websites into RAG pipelines or agent memory without managing browser infrastructure, proxy rotation, or anti-bot evasion yourself.
Fast crawls with reliable Markdown output. Default 2-minute timeout per crawl; set explicit limits to avoid runaway jobs. Caching enabled by default (2-day window) speeds up repeated crawls but may serve stale content—disable with `cache: false` if you need live data. Chrome rendering adds latency vs HTTP-only mode.
You're building an agent that needs to extract structured data, screenshots, or link graphs from websites as part of multi-step workflows.
Single-page scrapes are fast. Screenshots and link extraction work reliably. Data connectors (S3, GCS, Sheets, Azure, Supabase) let you stream results directly to storage without polling. Metadata (title, description, keywords) is optional but adds minimal overhead.
Default caching can serve stale content
Cache is enabled by default with a 2-day freshness window. For AI routes, `skipBrowser` is disabled (browser always runs), but for standard routes, cached HTML is returned without re-launching Chrome. If your agent needs live page state (e.g., real-time pricing, dynamic content), you must explicitly set `cache: false` or `{ skipBrowser: false }`. This adds latency.
Crawl timeout defaults to 2 minutes
Large crawls can hit the default 2-minute timeout. Set `crawl_timeout` explicitly (e.g., `{ secs: 600, nanos: 0 }` for 10 minutes) if you're crawling deep or wide. Hitting the timeout mid-crawl returns partial results, which may silently break downstream logic if not handled.
Spider is cheaper and faster for bulk crawls; Firecrawl is better for complex JavaScript extraction and structured output schemas.
You need cost-effective, high-volume crawling with Markdown output for RAG or agent memory. Anti-bot handling is automatic. Pay-as-you-go with no subscriptions.
You need LLM-driven extraction (e.g., 'extract all product prices and reviews as JSON'), complex form-filling, or guaranteed structured output. Firecrawl's extraction layer is more mature.
Trust Breakdown
What It Actually Does
Spider lets you crawl websites and scrape their content via a simple API, pulling data from pages including those with JavaScript or anti-bot protections. It delivers results in formats like markdown or JSON, perfect for feeding into AI apps.[1][2]
Spider is a high-performance web crawler and scraping API built in Rust, designed as the web data layer for AI agents and LLMs. It supports HTTP, Chrome CDP, and WebDriver rendering modes, and includes built-in stealth profiles that automatically handle Cloudflare, Akamai, and PerimeterX. Spider outputs clean Markdown for direct LLM consumption and offers pay-as-you-go pricing with no subscriptions.
At roughly $0.48–$0.65 per 1,000 pages with no credit multipliers, it is one of the most cost-effective scraping APIs available.
Fit Assessment
Best for
- ✓web-scraping
- ✓browser-automation
- ✓data-extraction
- ✓knowledge-retrieval