--- source_url: "https://webclaw.io/?utm_source=openai" title: "webclaw: Web Scraping API for LLMs and AI Agents" mirrored_at: 2026-09-02T13:02:27.594Z host: webclaw.io cited_in_42a: true mirror_canonical: "https://index.42a.ai/webclaw.io/index__q__utm_source_openai" --- > **Original source:** https://webclaw.io/?utm_source=openai Production-ready on real-world sites like these Before vs After Webclaw ## Stop building your own scraper. Call one web scraper API instead. You wire up parsers, headless browsers, and proxy pools, then babysit the stack every time a site ships a redesign and your selectors snap. Your requests hit a bot wall, come back as an empty shell of HTML, and your agent quietly reasons over nothing. You dump raw page markup into the model and watch nav bars, cookie banners, and script tags eat the context window. The model answers from frozen training data, so it invents prices, docs, and news it has no way to actually read. One page is JavaScript, the next is a PDF, a third is a DOCX, so you bolt on a different library for every format and glue them by hand. Webclaw is a web scraper API for AI agents: one call takes a URL and returns clean markdown, structured JSON, or LLM-ready text, and site redesigns become our problem, not yours. Webclaw gets through bot walls and renders JavaScript pages, so you scrape without getting blocked and your agent reads the real content. Webclaw converts HTML to clean markdown and strips the page down to meaning, cutting the tokens you feed a model by around 90% and leaving room in the context window for reasoning. Webclaw feeds agents live web data on demand, so answers cite the page as it reads right now instead of stale training data. One API turns HTML, PDFs, and DOCX into structured data across 14 REST endpoints, and its 14-tool MCP server plugs straight into Claude, Cursor, and Codex. Webclaw is a Firecrawl alternative with a drop-in /v2 route and an open-source Rust core: swap one base URL, keep every call you already wrote, and ship product instead of scraping infra. The API ## One key, one base URL, every endpoint. Any of these 11 endpoints, in curl, TypeScript, Python, or Go — with the response it actually returns, rendered or raw. One API key, one credit pool, billed by what you use. Scrape. Turn any URL into clean, LLM-ready content with one call. [Docs](https://webclaw.io/docs/api/scrape) Use cases ## See it in a real workflow. Six ways teams turn a URL into structured data — each one a single API call or MCP tool. [Browse all use cases](https://webclaw.io/use-cases) 0k pages extracted 0 bot walls bypassed 0 websites scraped 0 github stars Pricing ## Pay for pages, not seats. One credit pool covers every endpoint. Start in minutes, or self-host the open-source stack with no limits. Save 20% Starter $19/mo - Credits 10,000/mo - Research 3 runs/mo - Max sources 10 - Concurrency 5 - Support Email Card required · cancel anytime PopularGrowth $49/mo - Credits 100,000/mo - Research 10 runs/mo - Max sources 20 - Concurrency 20 - Support Priority Pro $99/mo - Credits 250,000/mo - Research 20 runs/mo - Max sources 30 - Concurrency 50 - Support Priority Scale $399/mo - Credits 1,000,000/mo - Research 60 runs/mo - Max sources 100 - Concurrency 100 - Support Priority + Slack Cancel anytime·no lock-in·self-host the open-source core for free Common questions ## Questions, answered. Webclaw is a web extraction toolkit that turns any website into clean, structured data. Output formats include Markdown, JSON, HTML, plain text, and an LLM-optimized mode that strips noise and cuts token count by around 90% vs raw HTML. Webclaw uses HTTP with TLS fingerprint impersonation instead of spinning up a headless browser. Sub-200ms response times, zero browser overhead, no Selenium or Playwright dependency. Content extraction runs via readability scoring plus a 9-step pipeline, no browser needed for most pages. The open-source version (AGPL-3.0) runs locally on your own hardware with no limits, so you can try the full engine for free without a card. The managed API is paid, starting at $19/mo for Starter, and you can cancel any time from the billing portal. Yes. Webclaw is open source under AGPL-3.0. You can run the CLI, REST API server, or MCP server on your own infrastructure. Docker images and one-line deploy scripts are available. Six formats: Markdown (clean readable text), JSON (structured with metadata), HTML (sanitized), plain text, LLM-optimized (stripped of noise for AI consumption), and raw HTML. The LLM format runs a 9-step optimization pipeline to minimize token usage. Webclaw ships a Model Context Protocol server that exposes 14 tools: scrape, search, crawl, map, batch, extract, summarize, diff, brand, research, lead, lead\_batch, list\_extractors, and vertical\_scrape. Works with any MCP client (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Codex, Antigravity) over stdio. Your extracted content is never stored or logged on our servers. Requests are processed in real-time and the response is returned directly to you. If you use LLM features, content is sent to the AI provider for processing but is not retained. For full control, self-host the entire stack. Webclaw can use language models to extract structured JSON from pages using a schema you define, answer questions about page content with prompt-based extraction, or generate summaries. It chains through local Ollama first, then falls back to cloud providers. Partners ## Backing open web extraction ## Ship your agent today. Scrape forever. Cancel anytime. Migrate from Firecrawl in 60 seconds with the compatibility layer.