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DiffbotEditor's Pick

AI using computer vision and NLP to parse web pages, powering a 10B+ entity knowledge graph used by Cisco, Adobe, and Microsoft.

Nathan Kessler
By Nathan KesslerUpdated

Each tool is evaluated against our methodology using public docs, vendor demos, and hands-on testing.

Agentic extraction tools use AI models (often vision-language models) to autonomously understand and interact with web pages. Instead of writing CSS selectors or XPath queries, you describe what data you want in natural language and the AI figures out how to get it. This approach is more resilient to website changes and can handle complex, multi-step extraction workflows.

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Features

✓JS Rendering
✓Structured Output
–Open Source
–Self-Hosted Option
Pricing:PaidSee pricing →

Editorial assessment

The OG of AI-powered extraction, profitable and serving enterprise customers with a 1T+ fact knowledge graph. Computer vision approach means it works on any page layout without CSS selectors. Enterprise pricing makes it inaccessible for startups. The knowledge graph is the real product – if you just need page extraction, cheaper options abound. But for entity resolution at scale, nothing competes.

How Diffbot compares

ScrapeGraphAI

ScrapeGraphAI offers open-source LLM-powered extraction for teams that can't justify Diffbot's enterprise pricing.

parse.bot

parse.bot provides similar 'describe what you need' extraction but targeted at simpler, single-site use cases.

See full Diffbot alternatives comparison →

Frequently asked questions

How much does Diffbot cost?

Diffbot is a paid product built on a credit model, where each call spends credits and different APIs consume different amounts. Querying the Knowledge Graph costs more than extracting a single page, so your bill depends on the mix of calls you make. Published plans run from a low monthly tier up to custom enterprise pricing for high volume and faster call rates. Check diffbot.com/pricing for the current tiers and credit allowances, since they change.

Is Diffbot open source?

No. Diffbot is a closed commercial product. The extraction APIs and the 10B+ entity Knowledge Graph are proprietary and reached only through Diffbot's hosted service, so there is no source you can read or modify and no public repository. If an open-source extractor is a hard requirement, ScrapeGraphAI is the alternative in this category that you can run and adapt yourself.

Can Diffbot be self-hosted?

No. Diffbot runs only as a hosted API. Every extraction and every Knowledge Graph query goes through Diffbot's cloud, so you cannot deploy it inside your own infrastructure. That rules it out for teams that need data to stay on-premises or air-gapped for compliance. ScrapeGraphAI is the self-hostable option here, since it is open source and you decide where it runs.

Does Diffbot render JavaScript?

Yes. Diffbot renders pages in a full browser and then uses computer vision and NLP to find the content, so it handles JavaScript-heavy and client-rendered pages. Because it reads the visual layout instead of relying on CSS selectors, it adapts to differently built sites without per-site rules. Output comes back as typed JSON fields for things like articles, products, and discussions.

What is Diffbot best used for?

Diffbot fits entity resolution and large-scale knowledge work: querying its 10B+ entity, trillion-fact graph, enriching records, and pulling structured data across many differently built sites without writing selectors. Enterprises including Cisco, Adobe, and Microsoft use it. It is a weaker fit for startups on tight budgets that only need basic page-to-JSON extraction, where cheaper per-page tools handle the job.

How does Diffbot compare to Firecrawl?

Firecrawl turns pages and sites into clean markdown or structured data for LLM pipelines and is usually cheaper to start with for straightforward crawl-and-extract work. Diffbot's distinguishing asset is its pre-built Knowledge Graph and entity resolution, which Firecrawl does not offer. Pick Firecrawl to feed content into RAG or agents on a budget. Pick Diffbot when you need queryable entities and facts at scale.

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