# Grabber vs Jina Reader

> Grabber vs Jina Reader: price per page, plans, free tiers, failed requests, formats and MCP, side by side. Checked October 2026.

Jina Reader turns a URL into Markdown when you put r.jina.ai in front of it, and charges by the tokens it returns. Grabber charges a flat price per page, however long it is.

[Get API key](https://dashboard.grabber.sh/signup) · [All comparisons](https://grabber.sh/alternatives)

## At a glance

|  | Grabber | Jina Reader |
| --- | --- | --- |
| How you pay | Prepaid credit, from $5. No plans | Prepaid token packs: $50 for 1 billion tokens |
| Pay without a subscription | Yes: it is the only way to pay | Yes: one-off packs, with optional auto top-up |
| A static page | $0.001 | By length: $0.05 per million output tokens on the $50 pack |
| A JavaScript page | $0.005 with js_render=true | The same token price, with the browser engine |
| Failed requests | Never charged. A page that loads with a 404 or 500 status is charged | Not charged |
| Unused credit | Valid for 365 days | Expiry not stated on the pricing page |
| Free tier | $1 at signup, about 1,000 pages, no card | 10 million tokens for non-commercial use; 20 requests a minute without a key |
| Formats | Markdown, HTML, text, links, raw body, page metadata | Markdown, HTML, text, screenshots, JSON extraction with ReaderLM-v2 |
| MCP server | Yes, remote | Yes, remote |
| Rate limit | 60 requests a minute per key | 500 requests a minute with a paid key |

Checked on October 27, 2026 against Jina Reader's own pricing page and docs. Prices change, so check the sources below before you decide.

## What it costs

| Example | Grabber | Jina Reader |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Smallest purchase | $5 | $50 |
| A page of 5,000 output tokens | $0.001 | About $0.00025 |
| A page of 40,000 output tokens | $0.001 | About $0.002 |

Jina prices on the $50 pack. The token count of a page is roughly its length in words, times 1.3.

## When Jina Reader is the better choice

- Your pages are short or medium length. At $0.05 per million tokens, a typical page costs a fraction of $0.001.
- You want to try it without signing up: Reader works without a key, at 20 requests a minute.
- You need screenshots, CSS selectors to keep or remove parts of a page, or forwarded cookies.
- You need very high throughput: premium keys allow 5,000 requests a minute.

## When Grabber is the better choice

- You want to start small: Grabber top-ups start at $5, and Jina's smallest pack is $50.
- You want a price you can predict: every page costs $0.001, however long it is.
- Your free use is commercial: Grabber's signup credit has no non-commercial limit.
- You want links, page metadata and the raw body as separate fields of one response.

## Switching from Jina Reader

Reader puts the target in the path and options in headers. Grabber puts both in the query.

| Jina Reader | Grabber |
| --- | --- |
| `https://r.jina.ai/https://example.com` | `/fetch?url=https://example.com&formats=markdown&unwrap=true` |
| `X-Engine: browser` | `js_render=true` |
| `X-Return-Format: html` | `formats=html` |
| `X-Return-Format: text` | `formats=text` |
| `Authorization: Bearer jina_…` | `Authorization: Bearer gsh_…` |

## Questions

### Is Grabber cheaper than Jina Reader?

Usually not per page: Jina charges by output tokens, and a typical page costs less than $0.001. Grabber costs less to start, $5 instead of $50, and a long page costs the same as a short one.

### Does Jina Reader render JavaScript?

Yes, with its browser engine. Grabber renders a page when you add js_render=true, for $0.005.

### Can I use Jina's free tier in a commercial product?

Jina's free tokens are for non-commercial use. Grabber's signup credit can be used for anything our terms allow.

## Sources

- [Jina Reader](https://jina.ai/reader/)
- [Jina API pricing](https://jina.ai/api-dashboard/pricing/)
- [Reader API docs](https://r.jina.ai/docs)
- [Jina MCP server](https://github.com/jina-ai/MCP)

Grabber's prices are on the [pricing page](https://grabber.sh/pricing) and in the [docs](https://grabber.sh/docs/pricing-and-limits).

## Other comparisons

- [Grabber vs Firecrawl](https://grabber.sh/alternatives/firecrawl): Monthly plans
- [Grabber vs Tavily Extract](https://grabber.sh/alternatives/tavily-extract): Credits
- [Grabber vs ScrapingBee](https://grabber.sh/alternatives/scrapingbee): Monthly plans
- [Grabber vs Scrape.do](https://grabber.sh/alternatives/scrape-do): Monthly plans
- [Grabber vs Apify](https://grabber.sh/alternatives/apify): Compute time
- [Grabber vs ZenRows](https://grabber.sh/alternatives/zenrows): Monthly plans

## Give your agents the web

Sign up in a minute and fetch your first 1,000 pages for free.

[Get API key](https://dashboard.grabber.sh/signup) · [Read the docs](https://grabber.sh/docs)