Web Scraping MCP Server

A hosted Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that gives Claude, Cursor, Windsurf and any other MCP client one read-only tool for fetching any public web page. It goes out through managed proxies, renders JavaScript when a page needs it, and returns clean markdown, plain text, raw HTML or structured JSON, with nothing to host and no browser in your stack.

This is the fallback for sites with no dedicated API. When a site does have one in the HasData catalogue, that tool returns parsed fields and this one returns a page.

1,000 free credits every month, no card required. A plain fetch costs 1 credit, so the free tier covers 1,000 of them.

https://mcp.hasdata.com/mcp?apis=web_scraping

Contents

• What you need
• Quick start
• Example prompts
• Tools
• Output formats
• Errors and failure paths
• Pricing, free tier and limits
• How it compares
• FAQ
• HasData links
• Development
• Contributing
• License

What you need

An MCP client and a HasData API key from the dashboard, free to create with no card. This is a remote server, so the simplest path is a URL and an x-api-key header, with no container to run. A client that only speaks stdio reaches it through a thin launcher, published as @hasdata/web-scraping-mcp on npm and hasdata-web-scraping-mcp on PyPI, shown below.

Quick start

The server URL is the same for every client. We run it hands-on in Claude Code and Claude Desktop. The other blocks follow each client's own documented format for a remote server.

Clients with OAuth support can add the same URL as a connector and sign in without putting a key in a config file.

claude mcp add --transport http web-scraping "https://mcp.hasdata.com/mcp?apis=web_scraping" \
  --header "x-api-key: HASDATA_API_KEY"

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "web-scraping": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@hasdata/web-scraping-mcp"],
      "env": { "HASDATA_API_KEY": "YOUR_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "web-scraping": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["hasdata-web-scraping-mcp"],
      "env": { "HASDATA_API_KEY": "YOUR_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "web-scraping": {
      "url": "https://mcp.hasdata.com/mcp?apis=web_scraping",
      "headers": { "x-api-key": "HASDATA_API_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "web-scraping": {
      "serverUrl": "https://mcp.hasdata.com/mcp?apis=web_scraping",
      "headers": { "x-api-key": "HASDATA_API_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

{
  "servers": {
    "web-scraping": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://mcp.hasdata.com/mcp?apis=web_scraping",
      "headers": { "x-api-key": "HASDATA_API_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

Example prompts

• Fetch this page as markdown and summarise it.
• Read this documentation page and pull out every code block.
• Get the titles and links from the front page of this site as JSON.
• This page loads its content with JavaScript, so render it and wait for the results list before reading.
• Fetch this page through a German residential proxy and tell me whether the pricing differs.
• Take a screenshot of this page.

One call answers each of these. What changes between them is how much of the browser you asked for, and that is what the call costs.

Tools

One tool. The cost depends on what you turn on, and the table is in Pricing.

Scrape web page

hasdata_web_scraping_web_scraping_scrapeWebPage

Fetch one URL.

extractRules maps a field name to a CSS selector, with @attr to read an attribute rather than text.

{ "title": "h1", "link_href": "a#link @href", "page_text": "body" }

jsScenario is an array of actions run in order, covering click, wait, waitFor, waitForAndClick, scrollX, scrollY, fill and evaluate for arbitrary JavaScript. It needs jsRendering on.

aiExtractRules describes the shape you want and lets a model fill it from the HTML. Each key is an output field, typed as string, number, boolean, list or item for a nested object.

Output formats

This is the part worth reading before your first call, because the response shape moves with outputFormat.

Ask for exactly one of markdown, text or html, and the content arrives as a plain string in text at the top level.

{
  "url": "https://api.hasdata.com/scrape/web/",
  "status": 200,
  "json": null,
  "text": "# Example Domain\n\nThis domain is for use in documentation examples without needing permission. Avoid use in operations.\n\n[Learn more](https://iana.org/domains/example)\n"
}

Include json, alone or alongside another format, and everything moves inside json, the top-level text becomes null, and the requested formats become keys in there next to the page metadata.

{
  "json": {
    "requestMetadata": { "id": "7764031a-43f7-4102-8561-a7b7a6f1cbf5", "status": "ok" },
    "statusCode": 200,
    "statusText": "OK",
    "headers": { "server": "nginx", "content-type": "text/html; charset=utf-8" },
    "extractedData": { "title": "Hacker News", "firstStory": ["iPhone Duo", "apple.com", "Show HN: What if the speed of light was 5 km/h?"] }
  },
  "text": null
}