By capability · Web crawler API
Web crawler API and website crawler API that renders JavaScript and turns whole sites into clean data
The short answer
A web crawler API takes a starting URL and crawl rules, walks the site by following links, renders each page and returns the content as structured data, so you do not build or run the crawler yourself. ClawEngine crawls a whole site, renders its JavaScript and returns clean markdown or typed JSON per page in one request. It crawls public, permitted pages only, reads robots.txt and honors crawl-delay. Plans start at $39 a month.
Clean markdown & JSON · JavaScript rendered · robots.txt respected
Last updated August 2026
Hit Extract to turn this page into clean, LLM-ready data.
robots.txt respected · public data only
A single fetch is easy. Crawling an entire site, following links, rendering JavaScript, deduping and staying polite, is the hard part most teams underestimate. ClawEngine is a managed web crawler API: give it a starting URL and crawl rules, and it walks the site, renders each page and returns clean markdown or structured JSON, page by page.
You get the output, not the operations. There is no proxy rotation to manage, no headless browser fleet to scale, and no queue to babysit. ClawEngine crawls public and permitted pages only, reads and respects robots.txt and Terms of Service, and honors crawl-delay, so you cover a whole site responsibly and at scale.
Any URL in LLM-ready data out
robots.txt respected public data only
Why it works
What you get with Web crawler API
Whole-site crawling
Give it a seed URL and crawl rules, and ClawEngine follows links across the site, rendering and extracting each page so you get full coverage, not one fetch.
Managed scale, zero ops
Concurrency, retries and rendering are handled for you, so a large crawl is an API call rather than a fleet of browsers and proxies to run.
Polite and permitted
The crawler reads robots.txt, honors crawl-delay and stays on public, permitted pages, so coverage never comes at the cost of compliance.
What it handles
Any URL in, clean structured data out
Point ClawEngine at a public page and it crawls, renders the JavaScript and extracts clean markdown or typed JSON in one call. Define a schema for structured fields, and respect robots.txt and Terms of Service by default.
- Crawls entire sites from a seed URL
- Follows links and dedupes pages automatically
- Renders JavaScript on every page
- Returns clean markdown or JSON per page
- Handles concurrency, retries and scale for you
- Reads robots.txt and honors crawl-delay
{
"url": "https://example.com/products/atlas",
"title": "Atlas Field Notebook",
"markdown": "# Atlas Field Notebook\n\nDurable...",
"data": {
"name": "Atlas Field Notebook",
"price": 24.00,
"currency": "USD",
"rating": 4.7
},
"links": [ "/products", "/cart" ],
"metadata": { "rendered": true }
}
Why ClawEngine
One API that crawls, renders and extracts
Not a raw HTML dump, not a headless browser fleet to run, and not a brittle parser to maintain. One call crawls a public page, renders its JavaScript and returns clean markdown or typed JSON, built for RAG pipelines and AI agents.
LLM-ready output
Clean markdown or typed JSON with the boilerplate stripped, so the data drops straight into a vector store, a prompt or an agent without a cleanup step.
JavaScript rendered
Each page loads in a real browser environment before extraction, so single-page apps and client-rendered content come back complete, not as an empty shell.
Compliance-first
ClawEngine works on public, permitted data only. It respects robots.txt and site Terms of Service and honors crawl-delay, so responsible scraping is the default.
Code examples
Crawl a whole site in a few lines
Start a crawl with one POST, then either poll for pages or register a webhook. Crawls run asynchronously, so a 500-page site is one call, not a queue you operate. Scope with a path prefix, a page limit and a crawl depth.
curl https://api.clawengine.ai/v1/crawl \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $CLAWENGINE_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"url": "https://example.com/docs",
"include_paths": ["/docs"],
"limit": 500,
"max_depth": 4,
"format": "markdown"
}'
# 202 Accepted
# { "id": "crawl_8f2a1c9e", "status": "queued", "url": "https://example.com/docs" }
import os, time, requests
BASE = "https://api.clawengine.ai/v1"
headers = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['CLAWENGINE_API_KEY']}"}
# 1. Kick off the crawl
job = requests.post(f"{BASE}/crawl", headers=headers, json={
"url": "https://example.com/docs",
"include_paths": ["/docs"],
"limit": 500,
"format": "markdown",
}).json()
# 2. Poll until it finishes
while True:
res = requests.get(f"{BASE}/crawl/{job['id']}", headers=headers).json()
if res["status"] == "completed":
break
time.sleep(3)
# 3. Every page is clean markdown, ready to chunk and embed
for page in res["pages"]:
print(page["url"], len(page["markdown"]))
// Register a webhook and ClawEngine POSTs each page as it completes,
// so you never poll. Great for large or scheduled crawls.
await fetch("https://api.clawengine.ai/v1/crawl", {
method: "POST",
headers: {
Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.CLAWENGINE_API_KEY}`,
"Content-Type": "application/json",
},
body: JSON.stringify({
url: "https://example.com/docs",
limit: 500,
format: "markdown",
webhook: "https://yourapp.com/hooks/clawengine",
}),
});
// Your endpoint receives { crawl_id, url, markdown, data, metadata } per page.
People also ask
Web crawler API: the questions buyers ask
What is a web crawling API?
A web crawling API is a hosted service that walks a website for you. You send a starting URL and crawl rules, and it follows links across the site, fetches each page, renders any JavaScript and returns the content as structured data. The point is that discovery, queueing, concurrency, retries and rendering happen on the service side, so crawling a site is an API call rather than infrastructure you build and run.
How is a crawler API different from rolling my own crawler?
The first version of your own crawler is easy, and the next six months are not. What you end up maintaining is the queue, deduplication, politeness and crawl-delay, retry and backoff logic, a headless browser fleet for JavaScript pages, memory limits, and a parser per site layout that breaks when the layout changes. A crawler API absorbs all of that and hands back finished data. You give up some control in exchange for not owning the fleet.
When should I use crawl instead of scraping a single page?
Use a single fetch when you already know every URL you want. Use a crawl when you do not: you have a seed URL and you want everything under it, like a whole documentation set, a full product catalog or an entire knowledge base. Crawling is discovery plus extraction. Scraping is extraction against a URL you already have.
Does a crawler API work on JavaScript-heavy sites?
It does if it renders. ClawEngine loads each page in a real browser environment and waits for the client-side content to build before extracting, so single-page apps and client-rendered listings come back complete instead of as an empty shell. If a crawler only reads raw HTML, a JavaScript-heavy site returns almost nothing, which is the most common reason a crawl looks like it worked but produced no content.
Can I crawl only part of a site?
Yes, and you usually should. Crawl rules let you scope to a path prefix, cap crawl depth, set a page limit and exclude sections you do not need. Scoping the crawl is the main lever on both cost and quality: a documentation crawl that also walks the changelog, the careers pages and every tag archive costs more and returns worse data for a retrieval index.
Is web crawling legal?
Crawling public web pages is broadly lawful in the United States, and US courts have repeatedly declined to treat scraping publicly available data as unauthorized access under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. That is not blanket permission. A site's Terms of Service, its robots.txt, copyright in the content, and privacy law around personal data all still apply. ClawEngine is built for public and permitted data only, respects robots.txt and Terms of Service, and honors crawl-delay. This is general information rather than legal advice.
Which crawler API is best for AI agents?
The one that returns data your model can use without a cleaning stage. An agent that receives raw HTML spends tokens on navigation and script tags and retrieves badly. ClawEngine returns clean markdown or typed JSON against a schema you define from the same call that crawls and renders, which is why it suits agent and RAG pipelines. Firecrawl is a strong alternative for markdown-first work, and Crawl4AI is the leading option if you want to self-host.
How do I crawl a JavaScript website?
You need a crawler that renders, because on a client-rendered site the links themselves are often built by JavaScript, so a raw-HTML crawler finds no content and no next URLs and stops after one page. A rendering crawler loads each page in a real browser, waits for the content to build, then extracts the text and the links it discovered. ClawEngine renders every page it crawls, so a single-page app is crawled to full depth rather than dying at the seed URL.
What is crawling as a service?
It is crawling delivered as a hosted API rather than infrastructure you operate. You send a seed URL and scope rules and receive finished pages, while the provider runs the queue, the concurrency limits, the retries, the browser fleet and the politeness controls. The trade is control for operations: you cannot patch the crawler yourself, and you also never get paged at 3am because a browser pool leaked memory mid-crawl.
Can I build a custom web crawler with an API?
Yes, and it is usually the faster path. You keep the parts that are specific to your product, which URLs to seed, what scope to allow, what schema to extract and where the output goes, and delegate the generic parts, fetching, rendering, link discovery, deduplication and backoff. The result is a crawler tuned to your data with none of the fleet underneath it, typically a few dozen lines rather than a service.
Good questions
Questions about Web crawler API
Explore more
More ways to turn the web into data with ClawEngine
Data extraction API
Pull typed, structured data from any public page with one API call.
Learn moreExtract structured data from a website
Define a schema, get typed records from any public website.
Learn moreExtract tables from a website
Turn HTML tables, including ones split across dozens of pages, into typed rows.
Learn moreStop wrangling raw HTML. Get LLM-ready data.
Point ClawEngine at a public page and one call crawls, renders the JavaScript and extracts clean markdown or typed JSON, ready for your RAG pipeline or AI agent. Public, permitted data only.
Crawl · render JS · extract markdown & JSON · robots.txt respected, public data only