#1 Jina AI Alternative
Jina Reader bills by output tokens at $0.05 per million, so price follows page length: $0.50 per 1,000 pages of 10,000 tokens, $1.00 at 20,000. Jina also says Reader does not bypass anti-bot systems. Context.dev is $0.90 per 1,000 pages at any length, with proxies and anti-bot handling included, plus crawl, map, and batches.
1,000 long product pages, 20,000 tokens each
Pro vs $50 token packs, October 2026 list prices
Jina bills $0.05 per million output tokens, so shorter pages cost less: a 10,000-token page is $0.50 per 1,000 and a 2,500-token page about $0.13. Jina says Reader does not bypass anti-bot systems; Context.dev includes anti-bot handling in every page.
Powering agents and products with the world's data.
Why switch
Jina Reader turns one URL into Markdown and bills by the token. Context.dev bills 1 credit per page at any length, includes proxies and anti-bot handling, and adds crawl, map, batches, monitoring, and browser actions.
- Key difference
Pay per page, not per token
Jina charges $50 per billion output tokens, so the bill follows page length: 1,000 pages of 10,000 tokens cost $0.50, and 1,000 product pages of 20,000 tokens cost $1.00. Its jina-ocr-v1 document mode bills 40 times the tokens. Context.dev Pro is $0.90 per 1,000 pages at any length, with proxies and anti-bot handling included.
- Independent benchmark
38 of 40 agent scrape tasks finished, against Jina Reader’s 6
On Scrapingbench, which gives every provider the same agent, model, and limits and checks each answer by script, the agent finished 95% of 40 scrape tasks with Context.dev and 15% with Jina Reader, at 1.36¢ per finished task against 4.26¢. In WebCrawlerAPI’s October 2026 test of 806 URLs, Context.dev returned usable Markdown on 92.1% of pages and Jina Reader on 86.8%.
- Protected sites
Proxies and anti-bot handling on every page
Jina’s Reader FAQ says it does not bypass anti-bot systems, and that upgrading to a paid key does not grant access to more websites. Context.dev runs managed proxies and anti-bot handling on every scrape for 1 credit. If every output of a scrape fails, you are not charged.
- Crawling
Crawl, map, and batch instead of one URL per call
Jina Reader reads one URL per request and has no crawl, map, or batch endpoint, so link discovery and the job queue are yours to build. Context.dev crawls up to 500 pages per call at 1 credit each, maps a site’s URLs for 1 credit, and runs batches of up to 100,000 URLs with JSON extraction and screenshots, kept for 180 days.
- Interaction
Browser actions, saved logins, and prebuilt parsers
Run up to five actions before capture (a natural-language step, scroll, wait, or wait for a selector) for 2 credits, and reuse a saved sign-in with browser profiles on paid plans. Jina runs custom JavaScript and forwards cookies you supply, but does not log in for you. Prebuilt parsers return Google Maps places and up to 1,000 reviews, app store listings, G2 reviews, and Instagram profiles.
- Monitoring
Change monitoring with webhooks
Monitors re-check a page or sitemap on your schedule for 1 credit per run and call your webhook when something changes. Failed or skipped runs are free. With Jina Reader, you schedule the fetches and diff the output yourself.
- Developer experience
SDKs in five languages and no per-minute cap
Context.dev ships TypeScript, Python, Ruby, Go, and PHP SDKs, a CLI, and an MCP server over a public OpenAPI document. Jina offers a CLI and an MCP server but no official SDK. Context.dev Pro allows 100 concurrent requests with no per-minute cap; Jina’s rate table limits a paid key to 500 Reader requests per minute and a Premium key to 5,000.
What one request really costs
What 1,000 requests cost on Context.dev Pro and at Jina’s $50 pack rate. Jina’s price follows the number of tokens in each response; Context.dev’s does not.
| Request | Context.dev | Jina AI | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| A short page, about 2,500 tokensA light product or landing page with no bot protection | $0.90 (1 credit) | $0.13 (2.5M tokens) | 7x less |
| A typical page, about 10,000 tokensArticles and docs pages with no bot protection | $0.90 (1 credit) | $0.50 (10M tokens) | 44% less |
| A long product page, about 20,000 tokensLarge retail pages with reviews and listings | $0.90 (1 credit) | $1.00 (20M tokens) | 11% more |
| A page behind anti-bot protectionSites behind Cloudflare or DataDome | $0.90 (1 credit) | No anti-bot handling | Not offered |
| Search 10 results, links onlyTitles, URLs, and snippets without page content | $0.90 (1 credit) | $0.50 (10M tokens) | 44% less |
| Search 10 results with full-page MarkdownEvery result page read in full, about 10,000 tokens each | $9.90 (11 credits) | $5.00 (100M tokens) | 49% less |
Derived from Context.dev Pro ($90 for 100,000 credits) at monthly billing and Jina’s $50 pack (1 billion tokens, $0.05 per million). Jina bills the tokens in each response, with at least 10,000 per search request; page sizes are estimates. Jina rates are from jina.ai/reader.
Full comparison
| Feature | Context.dev | Jina AI |
|---|---|---|
| Scraping & Crawling | ||
| Scrape to Markdown or HTML | Yes | Yes |
| Screenshots | Yes | Yes |
| Image URLs from the page | Yes | Yes |
| JSON extraction against your schema | 5 credits | Via ReaderLM-v2 |
| Prebuilt parsers (Maps, app stores, G2) | Yes | No |
| Crawl a site | 1 credit/page | No |
| Map site URLs | 1 credit | No |
| Async batch scraping | Up to 100,000 URLs | No |
| Change monitoring with webhooks | Yes | No |
| Parse PDFs and office documents | Yes | Yes |
| OCR on scanned documents | +1 credit per page | 40x tokens |
| Country geotargeting | Yes | X-Proxy header |
| Signed-in scraping with saved logins | Browser profiles | Forwarded cookies only |
| Interaction & Search | ||
| Browser actions before capture | Up to 5, 2 credits | Custom JavaScript |
| Search 10 results with page Markdown | 11 credits | From 10,000 tokens |
| Research answers with sources | 10 or 100 credits | DeepSearch, by token |
| Pricing & Billing | ||
| Billing unit | 1 credit per page | Output tokens |
| Price changes with page length | No | $0.05 per 1M tokens |
| JS rendering in base price | Yes | Yes |
| Anti-bot handling included | Yes | No |
| Failed requests free | Yes (404 billed) | Yes |
| Free plan | 1,000 credits/mo | 10M tokens per new key |
| Unused balance carries over | No | Prepaid, no reset |
| Smallest paid purchase | $20/mo | $50 token pack |
| Per-minute cap on paid plans | None | 500 or 5,000 RPM |
| Deployment | ||
| Managed cloud API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted open source | No | Apache-2.0 code |
| On-prem commercial license | No | Through Elastic |
| Developer Experience | ||
| Public OpenAPI spec | Yes | Yes |
| TypeScript SDK | Yes | No |
| Python SDK | Yes | No |
| Go, PHP, and Ruby SDKs | Yes | No |
| CLI | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | Yes |
| Embeddings and reranker on the same key | No | Yes |
| Also Included: Brand & Company Data | ||
| Brand profile by domain, name, email, or ticker | Yes | No |
| Logo CDN for direct embedding (Logo Link) | Yes | No |
Cost per 1,000 pages
Public list prices on both sites, broken down to the cost of 1,000 pages at each tier. Jina sells prepaid token packs and its price follows page length, so both a long and a short page are shown.
| Tier | Context.dev | Jina AI |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Free $0/mo 1,000 credits 2 concurrent requests $0 per 1K pages, any page | Free key $0 10M tokens, once per key 500 requests/min 500 long pages, one time 4,000 short pages, one time |
| Entry | Developer $20/mo 10,000 credits 10 concurrent requests $1.67–$2.00 per 1K pages, any page | Token pack $50 prepaid 1B tokens 500 requests/min $1.00 per 1K long pages $0.13 per 1K short pages |
| Mid | Pro $90/mo 100,000 credits 100 concurrent requests $0.75–$0.90 per 1K pages, any page | 2 token packs $100 prepaid 2B tokens 500 requests/min $1.00 per 1K long pages $0.13 per 1K short pages |
| Growth | Growth $300/mo 500,000 credits 250 concurrent requests $0.50–$0.60 per 1K pages, any page | 6 token packs $300 prepaid 6B tokens 500 requests/min $1.00 per 1K long pages $0.13 per 1K short pages |
| High volume | Scale $500/mo 1,000,000 credits 500 concurrent requests $0.42–$0.50 per 1K pages, any page | Premium pack $500 prepaid 11B tokens 5,000 requests/min $0.91 per 1K long pages $0.11 per 1K short pages |
- Jina bills by output tokens. Long pages assume 20,000 tokens of Markdown, about the size of a large retail product page, and short pages 2,500 tokens; a 10,000-token page costs half the long-page price. Context.dev charges 1 credit per page at any length, and each of its ranges runs from yearly to monthly billing.
- Jina sells prepaid token packs, not monthly plans: $50 for 1 billion tokens (500 Reader requests per minute) and $500 for 11 billion (5,000 per minute), plus 10 million free tokens with each new API key. Source: jina.ai/reader, accessed October 18, 2026.
- Jina’s Reader FAQ says Reader does not bypass anti-bot systems and that a paid key does not grant access to more websites, so Jina prices assume pages that load without bot protection. Context.dev includes managed proxies and anti-bot handling in every 1-credit page.
- The 2-pack and 6-pack rows are the closest spend to Context.dev Pro and Growth; Jina does not sell plans at those prices. Jina also prints two surcharges: jina-ocr-v1 bills 40 times the tokens, and each search request bills at least 10,000 tokens.
Prices and plans checked on .
Which one fits
Both turn URLs into LLM-ready Markdown. These are the cases where the choice is clear. For formats, pricing, and code, see the Context.dev web scraping API.
Choose Context.dev if
- Your pages are long or protected, and you want 1 credit per page at any length with proxies and anti-bot handling included.
- You crawl or map whole sites, or run batches of up to 100,000 URLs with JSON extraction and screenshots.
- You need browser actions, saved logins, change monitoring, or prebuilt parsers for maps, app stores, and reviews.
- You want SDKs in TypeScript, Python, Ruby, Go, and PHP, and brand or company data on the same key when a pipeline needs it.
Choose Jina AI if
- You mostly read short, unprotected pages. At $0.05 per million tokens, a 2,500-token page costs about $0.13 per 1,000.
- You run a lot of web search with full page content. Ten result pages of 10,000 tokens each cost about $5.00 per 1,000 searches on Jina, against $9.90 on Context.dev.
- You also need embeddings and a reranker, and want them on the same prepaid token balance.
- You want to self-host the Apache-2.0 Reader code, or license Jina models on-prem through Elastic.
A few things to know.
More details in the API documentation.
What is the best Jina AI alternative?
Context.dev is a Jina Reader alternative for teams that turn web pages into Markdown, HTML, or JSON in production. It charges 1 credit per page at any length with proxies and anti-bot handling included, where Jina bills by output tokens and says Reader does not bypass anti-bot systems. Context.dev also adds crawl, map, batches of up to 100,000 URLs, change monitoring, and browser actions. If you mostly read short, unprotected pages, or want embeddings on the same key, Jina can cost less.
How does Jina Reader pricing work?
Jina sells prepaid token packs instead of plans: $50 buys 1 billion tokens, $500 buys 11 billion, and every new API key comes with 10 million free tokens. Each Reader call is billed by the tokens in its response, so a 10,000-token page costs $0.0005 and a 20,000-token page twice that, and the same page as HTML, which runs longer than Markdown, costs more. Jina also prints two surcharges: jina-ocr-v1 bills 40 times the tokens, and each search request bills at least 10,000 tokens. Context.dev bills 1 credit per page whatever its length.
Does Jina Reader work on sites behind Cloudflare or DataDome?
Jina’s FAQ says Reader does not actively circumvent or bypass anti-bot systems, and that upgrading from a free tier to a paid key does not grant access to additional websites. Some users report Cloudflare challenges and empty Markdown bodies in GitHub issues on the Reader repository. Context.dev runs managed proxies and anti-bot handling on every scrape for 1 credit, and does not charge when every output fails.
Can Context.dev crawl a whole site?
Yes. Crawl returns up to 500 pages per call at 1 credit per successful page, Map returns a site’s URLs for 1 credit, and Batches take up to 100,000 URLs or a crawl, with failed pages refunded when the batch settles. Jina Reader works one URL at a time, so crawling with it means building your own link discovery and queue.
How does web search pricing compare?
Jina’s s.jina.ai bills the tokens of the result pages it reads, with a minimum of 10,000 tokens per request, so links-only search costs about $0.50 per 1,000 searches and ten results of 10,000 tokens each about $5.00. Context.dev bills 1 credit per 10 results: the relevant passages from all 10 result pages cost 2 credits ($1.80 per 1,000 searches on Pro), and full Markdown for every page costs 11 credits ($9.90). For full-page search, Jina usually costs less.
How do Context.dev and Jina Reader compare in independent benchmarks?
On Scrapingbench’s 40 scrape tasks, run with the same agent, model, and limits for every provider and checked by script, the agent finished 38 with Context.dev and 6 with Jina Reader (95% vs 15%), at 1.36¢ vs 4.26¢ per finished task. Scrapingbench notes that Jina’s score was measured under a 5,000-token budget. In WebCrawlerAPI’s October 2026 test of 806 URLs, Context.dev returned usable Markdown on 92.1% of pages and Jina Reader on 86.8%, and both kept most page chrome in their default output (extraction F1 of 0.176 and 0.184).
How do I migrate from r.jina.ai to Context.dev?
Replace the r.jina.ai prefix with a POST to /web/scrape that sends the URL and the outputs you want in formats (markdown, html, screenshot, or json). X-Target-Selector and X-Remove-Selector map to includeSelectors and excludeSelectors, X-Wait-For-Selector maps to waitFor, an X-Proxy country code maps to country, and custom headers carry over. SDKs are available for TypeScript, Python, Ruby, Go, and PHP. Embeddings and reranking have no Context.dev equivalent.
When is Jina the better choice?
Jina is a good fit if you mostly read short, unprotected pages, since $0.05 per million tokens makes a 2,500-token page about $0.13 per 1,000. Its search costs less when you read full result pages, it bundles embeddings and a reranker on the same token balance, and its Reader code is Apache-2.0 if you want to self-host. You can also try r.jina.ai without an API key at 20 requests per minute, though Jina refuses keyless calls from some networks.
Is Jina still available after the Elastic acquisition?
Yes. Elastic acquired Jina AI on October 9, 2025, and the Reader, Search, and DeepSearch APIs are still sold as prepaid tokens on jina.ai. Data processing now follows Elastic’s Customer DPA, procurement goes through Elastic Sales, and since August 10, 2026, Elastic sells a Jina commercial and on-prem license as its own annual product.
More comparisons
Other web scraping APIs that teams compare with Context.dev, or see every comparison.
- Context.dev vs TinyFish38 of 40 agent scrape tasks finished in an independent benchmark, against TinyFish’s 31. Crawl, batches, and JSON extraction on one key.
- Context.dev vs BrowserbasePages as Markdown, HTML, or JSON without running browser sessions. 38 of 40 agent scrape tasks finished in an independent benchmark, against 30.
- Context.dev vs FirecrawlThe same 100,000 credits for $90 instead of $99, with 100 concurrent requests instead of 25. Blocked 403 pages are not billed.
Ready to switch from Jina AI?
Replace the r.jina.ai prefix with a Context.dev scrape call and pay 1 credit per page at any length, with anti-bot handling included and a free plan of 1,000 credits a month.