The short version
- Choose Spider if raw crawl throughput matters most, or you want an MIT-licensed crawler to embed in your own Rust, Python or Node code.
- Choose SarvCrawl if you want the crawl to end as a searchable knowledge base, with documents parsed alongside the pages.
SarvCrawl and Spider, side by side
| SarvCrawl | Spider | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Crawl-to-knowledge-base API | Rust crawler, as an open-source library and a cloud API |
| Best for | Content you want to search — web pages and documents together | Fast, high-volume whole-site crawls |
| Output | Markdown, HTML, JSON, links, images | HTML, text, markdown, JSON, JSONL, CSV, XML |
| JavaScript rendering | Yes, where a page needs it | Yes, headless Chrome only for pages that need it |
| Documents | PDF, Office, EPUB, images and audio; OCR for scans | Not a documented focus |
| Chunking, embeddings, search | Built in (search on paid plans) | Not offered; has web search and transform endpoints |
| Anti-bot and proxies | Not the focus | Proxy rotation, a residential pool, stealth mode |
| Pricing | 1 billion free tokens, no card; paid plans | Pay as you go at $1/GB plus compute; unlimited plans from $40/mo |
| Hosting and licence | Hosted, or self-host: Apache-2.0 with an AGPL-3.0 engine | Cloud API, or the open-source crawler under MIT |
| Integrations | REST, Node, Python, CLI, n8n, 21 MCP tools | Rust, CLI, Python, Node, MCP, LangChain, LlamaIndex, CrewAI |
Where they really differ
Spider is built for speed: a Rust crawler that streams pages back in many formats, renders JavaScript only when a page needs it, and rotates proxies on every request. The open-source crawler is MIT-licensed, so you can embed it with almost no conditions.
The cloud API bills bandwidth and compute rather than pages — $1 per GB plus a small CPU charge, with failed requests free — so cost follows page size. That is cheap for lean pages and harder to predict for heavy ones.
Spider ends at the crawl. SarvCrawl's crawl is slower to describe and faster to use: pages and linked documents land in a knowledge base, chunked on their own headings, embedded and searchable.
Using both
If you already crawl at volume with Spider, keep it for bulk collection, and use SarvCrawl for the sites you need an assistant or search box to answer from.
SarvCrawl vs Spider: questions
Is SarvCrawl a Spider alternative?
Yes, if you want the crawl to end in a searchable knowledge base. If raw throughput or an embeddable MIT library matters most, Spider is the stronger fit.
Is Spider open source?
Yes. The spider-rs crawler is MIT-licensed. The cloud API is a separate hosted service.
How is Spider priced?
Pay as you go at $1 per GB of bandwidth plus compute time, with no minimum, or unlimited plans from $40 a month.
Does Spider chunk or embed content?
Not that it documents. It returns pages in many formats. SarvCrawl chunks, embeds and indexes them, with search on paid plans.