The short version
- Choose ScrapeGraphAI if you want specific fields as JSON — prices, contacts, product specs — described in plain language instead of selectors.
- Choose SarvCrawl if you want the full content of sites and documents as markdown, chunked, embedded and searchable by keyword or meaning.
SarvCrawl and ScrapeGraphAI, side by side
| SarvCrawl | ScrapeGraphAI | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Crawl-to-knowledge-base API | LLM-driven scraping and structured extraction |
| Best for | Content you want to search — web pages and documents together | Turning pages into JSON from a prompt or schema |
| Output | Markdown, HTML, JSON, links, images | JSON from a schema; markdown, HTML, links, screenshots |
| JavaScript rendering | Yes, where a page needs it | Yes, with Playwright in the library and render modes in the API |
| Documents | PDF, Office, EPUB, images and audio; OCR for scans | PDFs through the API, billed per page |
| Chunking, embeddings, search | Built in (search on paid plans) | Not offered; its search is web search plus extraction |
| Anti-bot and proxies | Not the focus | Proxy rotation on Growth and above; stealth mode at extra credits |
| Pricing | 1 billion free tokens, no card; paid plans | 500 free credits; Starter $20/mo for 10,000 credits |
| Hosting and licence | Hosted, or self-host: Apache-2.0 with an AGPL-3.0 engine | Hosted API; the Python library is MIT open source |
| Integrations | REST, Node, Python, CLI, n8n, 21 MCP tools | Python and JS SDKs, MCP server, LangChain, LlamaIndex |
Where they really differ
ScrapeGraphAI starts from a prompt: describe the fields you want, optionally with a schema, and an LLM reads the page and returns JSON. The MIT-licensed Python library runs with your own model, and the hosted API adds scrape, extract, search, crawl and monitor endpoints. For field-level data without hand-written selectors, it is a direct fit.
Credits vary by call: a markdown scrape is 1 credit, an LLM extraction 5, PDFs 1 per page, with stealth and screenshots extra. Each extraction is a model call, so cost and output depend on the prompt and the model.
SarvCrawl does not try to extract fields. It keeps the whole document — every heading, table and paragraph — as markdown, chunks it on its own structure, embeds it, and lets you search it later for questions you didn't know to ask when you crawled.
Using both
Use ScrapeGraphAI where you need specific fields as JSON, and SarvCrawl for the full content an assistant answers questions from.
SarvCrawl vs ScrapeGraphAI: questions
Is SarvCrawl a ScrapeGraphAI alternative?
If you want whole sites and documents searchable, yes. If you want specific fields extracted into JSON from a prompt, ScrapeGraphAI is built for that and SarvCrawl is not.
Is ScrapeGraphAI open source?
The Python library is MIT-licensed and runs with your own LLM. The hosted API is a separate paid service.
How does pricing compare?
ScrapeGraphAI bills credits per call, from $20 a month for 10,000. SarvCrawl bills tokens for parsing, chunking and embedding, roughly 500 per page, with 1 billion free on sign-up.
Is SarvCrawl open source too?
Yes: Apache-2.0 with an AGPL-3.0 engine, hosted or self-hosted. The search service is hosted and not part of the open-source release.