# Spider alternative for AI agents: Clawifi vs Spider

> What each product's own pages say, side by side. Spider facts were read on 2026-10-23 from Spider's own pricing and docs pages; follow each link to check.

Canonical page: https://clawifi.dev/compare/spider

## What Spider's pages say

| Topic | Fact | Source (read 2026-10-23) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| pricing unit | Pay-as-you-go billing has two line items per request: $1 per GB of pre-transformation content and $0.0001 per CPU minute; failed requests cost $0. | [spider.cloud/pricing](https://spider.cloud/pricing) |
| paid plans | Pay-as-you-go is a prepaid balance with no subscription that does not expire; top-ups of $500 or more get a bonus. | [spider.cloud/pricing](https://spider.cloud/pricing) |
| paid plans | The Unlimited plan sells concurrency at a flat monthly price, from 2 concurrent ($40/mo) to 1,538 ($19,994/mo), with per-unit price falling from $20 to $13. | [spider.cloud/pricing](https://spider.cloud/pricing) |
| credit cost | JS rendering and proxies have no multipliers; the optional zero data retention setting bills at 2.5x credits. | [spider.cloud/pricing](https://spider.cloud/pricing) |
| rate limits | Accounts can make up to 10,000 core API requests per minute by default. | [spider.cloud/pricing](https://spider.cloud/pricing) |
| rate limits | On Unlimited, requests beyond the concurrency limit get an immediate 429 with Retry-After. | [spider.cloud/pricing](https://spider.cloud/pricing) |
| capabilities | Output formats include HTML, raw, plain text and markdown, with JSON, JSONL, CSV and XML responses. | [spider.cloud/pricing](https://spider.cloud/pricing) |
| free tier | The managed service gives a free balance on signup. | [spider.cloud/open-source/](https://spider.cloud/open-source/) |
| MCP server | Spider offers a hosted MCP server at mcp.spider.cloud/mcp and a local npx package (spider-cloud-mcp), both with 21 tools. | [spider.cloud/mcp/](https://spider.cloud/mcp/) |
| licence / self-host | The Rust crawler, browser engine and scraping/markdown libraries are on GitHub under the MIT license. | [spider.cloud/open-source/](https://spider.cloud/open-source/) |

## What Clawifi's pages say

| Topic | Fact | Source |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free plan | $0 with 1,000 credits a month. | [clawifi.dev/pricing](https://clawifi.dev/pricing) |
| Paid plans | Starter $19 a month (10,000 credits), Pro $99 a month (125,000 credits), Scale $299 a month (500,000 credits), billed monthly, USD excluding taxes. | [clawifi.dev/pricing](https://clawifi.dev/pricing) |
| Credit cost | Most calls cost 1 credit; a browser render 3; cache hits and failures on Clawifi’s side cost 0, while a page whose site answers with an error is charged as usual. | [clawifi.dev/docs/pricing-and-credits](https://clawifi.dev/docs/pricing-and-credits) |
| MCP | A local MCP server (`clawifi-mcp`) and a hosted one at `https://api.clawifi.dev/mcp` with 14 tools; 4 of them work without a key, 50 calls a day per address. | [clawifi.dev/docs/remote-mcp](https://clawifi.dev/docs/remote-mcp) |
| SDK | Python (`pip install clawifi`), plus a CLI and plain HTTP. | [clawifi.dev/sdk](https://clawifi.dev/sdk) |

Prices and limits change; the linked pages are the authority. Something out of date? [Tell us](mailto:clawifisupport@rearclabs.com?subject=Compare%20page)

## Questions

### Is Clawifi an alternative to Spider for AI agents?

For some jobs. The tables on this page put what Spider's own pages say (read 2026-10-23) about pricing unit, paid plans, credit cost, rate limits, capabilities, free tier, MCP server and licence / self-host beside what Clawifi's pages say. Clawifi searches many engines as one, reads pages and PDFs, and returns the passages that answer a question, with sources, over MCP, a Python SDK and plain HTTP. Which fits depends on what your agent needs to do.

### Does Spider have a free tier, and does Clawifi?

According to Spider's own pages (read 2026-10-23): The managed service gives a free balance on signup. Clawifi's Free plan is $0 with 1,000 credits a month, and 4 tools on the hosted MCP server work without a key, 50 calls a day per address.

### Can I use Spider and Clawifi from an MCP client?

According to Spider's own pages (read 2026-10-23): Spider offers a hosted MCP server at mcp.spider.cloud/mcp and a local npx package (spider-cloud-mcp), both with 21 tools. Clawifi has a local MCP server (`clawifi-mcp`) and a hosted one at `https://api.clawifi.dev/mcp` with 14 tools; see [Remote MCP](https://clawifi.dev/docs/remote-mcp).

### How do Spider and Clawifi charge?

According to Spider's own pages (read 2026-10-23): Pay-as-you-go billing has two line items per request: $1 per GB of pre-transformation content and $0.0001 per CPU minute; failed requests cost $0. Pay-as-you-go is a prepaid balance with no subscription that does not expire; top-ups of $500 or more get a bonus. Clawifi's paid plans are Starter at $19 a month, Pro at $99 a month, Scale at $299 a month; most calls cost 1 credit and a browser render 3; cache hits and failures on Clawifi’s side cost 0, while a page whose site answers with an error is charged as usual. See [Pricing](https://clawifi.dev/pricing).

## Other comparisons

- [Clawifi vs Brave Search API](https://clawifi.dev/compare/brave-search-api): Sourced, dated facts.
- [Clawifi vs Firecrawl](https://clawifi.dev/compare/firecrawl): Sourced, dated facts.
- [Clawifi vs Exa](https://clawifi.dev/compare/exa): Sourced, dated facts.
- [All comparisons](https://clawifi.dev/compare): The compare hub.