Scrape vs Crawl vs Map: Picking the Right Anakin API for the Job You have a URL. You need data from it. The question is not "how do I scrape this?" The question is "what scope of data do I actually need, and what's the cheapest way to get it?" Anakin exposes three distinct APIs for web data extraction: Scrape, Crawl, and Map. They sound like synonyms. They are not. Using the wrong one wastes money, slows you down, and sometimes returns way more (or less) than you needed. Here is how to think about each one. What Each API Actually Does Scrape API takes a single URL and returns clean, structured content from that page. You get the text, maybe the HTML, maybe specific fields depending on how you configure the request. One URL in, one payload out. It handles JavaScript rendering, handles bot detection, and gives you something you can immediately feed into a parser or an LLM prompt. Crawl API starts at a URL and follows links.…