# Compare Onto · Honest comparisons vs Firecrawl, context.dev, Jina, Exa, Tavily, ScrapingBee
> Per-vendor breakdowns of where Onto fits vs each adjacent product. Includes shared ground, capability matrices, and the honest "pick X if" decision matrix on every page.

**Source:** /compare
**Extracted:** 2026-06-24T17:42:54.523Z

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Comparisons · Honest breakdowns per vendor

## See where Onto fits.  
_And where it doesn't._

We don't pretend every adjacent product is a competitor. Two of the six below are genuinely complementary — chain them with Onto and you get better results than either alone. The rest are real alternatives in specific use cases. One thing they all share: they operate at **layer 1** — reading the web into your agent. Onto runs that same Read layer, plus Serve (a site-side SDK that feeds AI crawlers clean Markdown) and Act (agent transactions on sites). Every page calls out shared ground, where Onto extends the layer, and a decision matrix that includes "pick the other vendor if…" — because a comparison page that only says "pick us" isn't a comparison.

[Try the scanner free](/scanner)[Read API overview](/read-api)

01 // All comparisons

### Pick a vendor.

Each page is ~5-minute read with a capability matrix, shared ground, and honest pick-which decision criteria.

[

Direct alternative01

Onto vs Firecrawl

The closest direct comparison — both turn the public web into clean Markdown, both ship map + multi-page endpoints. Onto adds a trust score and keeps all extraction deterministic (no LLM in the pipeline); Firecrawl offers LLM-based JSON extraction and deeper recursive crawl.

](/compare/firecrawl)[

Direct alternative02

Onto vs context.dev

A web-intelligence API — scrape, crawl, extract, plus a distinctive brand-data niche (logos, firmographics) Onto doesn't touch. Onto adds a trust score and keeps extraction deterministic (no LLM). Both overlap at layer 1; Onto also runs Serve + Act.

](/compare/context-dev)[

Direct alternative03

Onto vs Jina Reader

Best-in-class free Markdown extraction with no signup required. Onto adds 0–100 accuracy scoring, hallucination flags, MCP server, and a site-side SDK.

](/compare/jina-reader)[

Adjacent (complementary)04

Onto vs Exa

Neural search API — finds URLs from natural-language queries. Often complementary to Onto: use Exa to discover, Onto to read + score the results.

](/compare/exa)[

Adjacent (complementary)05

Onto vs Tavily

AI research API that synthesizes answers across multiple sources. Pairs well with Onto for per-source extraction and trust scoring after the search step.

](/compare/tavily)[

Adjacent (different use case)06

Onto vs ScrapingBee

General-purpose web scraping with proxy rotation and captcha bypass. Different job — ScrapingBee for raw data scraping, Onto for AI grounding.

](/compare/scrapingbee)

Don't see your vendor?

### Run your own comparison.

The scanner is free — drop any URL, get an AIO score in seconds, then run the same URL through whichever vendor you're evaluating. Compare the actual output side by side.

[Open the scanner](/scanner)[// Or email founder@buildonto.dev](mailto:founder@buildonto.dev)