WebScraping AI MCP Server

What is WebScraping AI MCP Server about?

The server implements a set of MCP‑compatible tools that let LLMs interact with web pages: answering questions, extracting structured fields, returning raw HTML, plain text, or CSS‑selected fragments, and retrieving account usage data.

How to use WebScraping AI MCP Server?

1. Installation – run the package directly with npx:

   env WEBSCRAPING_AI_API_KEY=your_api_key npx -y webscraping-ai-mcp
   

   or clone the repo, npm install and npm start.
2. Configuration – set the required environment variable WEBSCRAPING_AI_API_KEY. Optional variables such as WEBSCRAPING_AI_CONCURRENCY_LIMIT, proxy settings, timeouts, and JS rendering flags can be exported to customise behaviour.
3. Integration – configure an MCP client (e.g., Claude, Anthropic, or any MCP‑enabled LLM) to launch the server via the command npx -y webscraping-ai-mcp and use the listed tools in prompts.

Key Features of WebScraping AI MCP Server

• Question answering on page content
• Structured field extraction with custom prompts
• Full HTML retrieval with optional JavaScript rendering
• Plain text extraction
• CSS selector‑based single or multiple element extraction
• Proxy support (datacenter or residential) with country selection
• Device emulation (desktop, mobile, tablet)
• Custom JavaScript execution on target pages
• Concurrency limit and rate‑limiting management
• Account usage monitoring tool

Use Cases of WebScraping AI MCP Server

• Enabling LLMs to browse the web for up‑to‑date information
• Automating product data collection for e‑commerce catalogues
• Summarising news articles or generating reports from web sources
• Gathering regulatory or research documents that require JS rendering
• Building conversational agents that can answer factual queries using live web data

FAQ from the WebScraping AI MCP Server

Q: Which environment variable is mandatory? A: WEBSCRAPING_AI_API_KEY must be set for every request.

Q: Can I disable JavaScript rendering? A: Yes, set WEBSCRAPING_AI_DEFAULT_JS_RENDERING=false or pass "js": false in the tool arguments.

Q: How many concurrent requests are allowed? A: The default limit is 5, configurable via WEBSCRAPING_AI_CONCURRENCY_LIMIT.

Q: What proxy types are supported? A: residential (default) and datacenter; you can also provide a custom proxy URL.

Q: How do I change the device emulation? A: Use the device argument with values desktop, mobile, or tablet.

WebScraping.AI MCP Server

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server implementation that integrates with WebScraping.AI for web data extraction capabilities.

Features

• Question answering about web page content
• Structured data extraction from web pages
• HTML content retrieval with JavaScript rendering
• Plain text extraction from web pages
• CSS selector-based content extraction
• Multiple proxy types (datacenter, residential) with country selection
• JavaScript rendering using headless Chrome/Chromium
• Concurrent request management with rate limiting
• Custom JavaScript execution on target pages
• Device emulation (desktop, mobile, tablet)
• Account usage monitoring

Installation

Running with npx

env WEBSCRAPING_AI_API_KEY=your_api_key npx -y webscraping-ai-mcp

Manual Installation

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/webscraping-ai/webscraping-ai-mcp-server.git
cd webscraping-ai-mcp-server

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Run
npm start

Configuring in Cursor

Note: Requires Cursor version 0.45.6+

The WebScraping.AI MCP server can be configured in two ways in Cursor:

1. Project-specific Configuration (recommended for team projects): Create a .cursor/mcp.json file in your project directory:

   {
     "servers": {
       "webscraping-ai": {
         "type": "command",
         "command": "npx -y webscraping-ai-mcp",
         "env": {
           "WEBSCRAPING_AI_API_KEY": "your-api-key",
           "WEBSCRAPING_AI_CONCURRENCY_LIMIT": "5"
         }
       }
     }
   }
   

2. Global Configuration (for personal use across all projects): Create a ~/.cursor/mcp.json file in your home directory with the same configuration format as above.

If you are using Windows and are running into issues, try using cmd /c "set WEBSCRAPING_AI_API_KEY=your-api-key && npx -y webscraping-ai-mcp" as the command.

This configuration will make the WebScraping.AI tools available to Cursor's AI agent automatically when relevant for web scraping tasks.

Running on Claude Desktop

Add this to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-server-webscraping-ai": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "webscraping-ai-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "WEBSCRAPING_AI_API_KEY": "YOUR_API_KEY_HERE",
        "WEBSCRAPING_AI_CONCURRENCY_LIMIT": "5"
      }
    }
  }
}

Configuration

Environment Variables

Required

• WEBSCRAPING_AI_API_KEY: Your WebScraping.AI API key
  • Required for all operations
  • Get your API key from WebScraping.AI

Optional Configuration

• WEBSCRAPING_AI_CONCURRENCY_LIMIT: Maximum number of concurrent requests (default: 5)
• WEBSCRAPING_AI_DEFAULT_PROXY_TYPE: Type of proxy to use (default: residential)
• WEBSCRAPING_AI_DEFAULT_JS_RENDERING: Enable/disable JavaScript rendering (default: true)
• WEBSCRAPING_AI_DEFAULT_TIMEOUT: Maximum web page retrieval time in ms (default: 15000, max: 30000)
• WEBSCRAPING_AI_DEFAULT_JS_TIMEOUT: Maximum JavaScript rendering time in ms (default: 2000)

Configuration Examples

For standard usage:

# Required
export WEBSCRAPING_AI_API_KEY=your-api-key

# Optional - customize behavior (default values)
export WEBSCRAPING_AI_CONCURRENCY_LIMIT=5
export WEBSCRAPING_AI_DEFAULT_PROXY_TYPE=residential # datacenter or residential
export WEBSCRAPING_AI_DEFAULT_JS_RENDERING=true
export WEBSCRAPING_AI_DEFAULT_TIMEOUT=15000
export WEBSCRAPING_AI_DEFAULT_JS_TIMEOUT=2000

Available Tools

1. Question Tool (webscraping_ai_question)

Ask questions about web page content.

{
  "name": "webscraping_ai_question",
  "arguments": {
    "url": "https://example.com",
    "question": "What is the main topic of this page?",
    "timeout": 30000,
    "js": true,
    "js_timeout": 2000,
    "wait_for": ".content-loaded",
    "proxy": "datacenter",
    "country": "us"
  }
}

Example response:

{
  "content": [
    {
      "type": "text",
      "text": "The main topic of this page is examples and documentation for HTML and web standards."
    }
  ],
  "isError": false
}

2. Fields Tool (webscraping_ai_fields)

Extract structured data from web pages based on instructions.

{
  "name": "webscraping_ai_fields",
  "arguments": {
    "url": "https://example.com/product",
    "fields": {
      "title": "Extract the product title",
      "price": "Extract the product price",
      "description": "Extract the product description"
    },
    "js": true,
    "timeout": 30000
  }
}

Example response:

{
  "content": [
    {
      "type": "text",
      "text": {
        "title": "Example Product",
        "price": "$99.99",
        "description": "This is an example product description."
      }
    }
  ],
  "isError": false
}

3. HTML Tool (webscraping_ai_html)

Get the full HTML of a web page with JavaScript rendering.

{
  "name": "webscraping_ai_html",
  "arguments": {
    "url": "https://example.com",
    "js": true,
    "timeout": 30000,
    "wait_for": "#content-loaded"
  }
}

Example response:

{
  "content": [
    {
      "type": "text",
      "text": "<html>...[full HTML content]...</html>"
    }
  ],
  "isError": false
}

4. Text Tool (webscraping_ai_text)

Extract the visible text content from a web page.

{
  "name": "webscraping_ai_text",
  "arguments": {
    "url": "https://example.com",
    "js": true,
    "timeout": 30000
  }
}

Example response:

{
  "content": [
    {
      "type": "text",
      "text": "Example Domain\nThis domain is for use in illustrative examples in documents..."
    }
  ],
  "isError": false
}

5. Selected Tool (webscraping_ai_selected)

Extract content from a specific element using a CSS selector.

{
  "name": "webscraping_ai_selected",
  "arguments": {
    "url": "https://example.com",
    "selector": "div.main-content",
    "js": true,
    "timeout": 30000
  }
}

Example response:

{
  "content": [
    {
      "type": "text",
      "text": "<div class=\"main-content\">This is the main content of the page.</div>"
    }
  ],
  "isError": false
}

6. Selected Multiple Tool (webscraping_ai_selected_multiple)

Extract content from multiple elements using CSS selectors.

{
  "name": "webscraping_ai_selected_multiple",
  "arguments": {
    "url": "https://example.com",
    "selectors": ["div.header", "div.product-list", "div.footer"],
    "js": true,
    "timeout": 30000
  }
}

Example response:

{
  "content": [
    {
      "type": "text",
      "text": [
        "<div class=\"header\">Header content</div>",
        "<div class=\"product-list\">Product list content</div>",
        "<div class=\"footer\">Footer content</div>"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "isError": false
}

7. Account Tool (webscraping_ai_account)

Get information about your WebScraping.AI account.

{
  "name": "webscraping_ai_account",
  "arguments": {}
}

Example response:

{
  "content": [
    {
      "type": "text",
      "text": {
        "requests": 5000,
        "remaining": 4500,
        "limit": 10000,
        "resets_at": "2023-12-31T23:59:59Z"
      }
    }
  ],
  "isError": false
}

Common Options for All Tools

The following options can be used with all scraping tools:

• timeout: Maximum web page retrieval time in ms (15000 by default, maximum is 30000)
• js: Execute on-page JavaScript using a headless browser (true by default)
• js_timeout: Maximum JavaScript rendering time in ms (2000 by default)
• wait_for: CSS selector to wait for before returning the page content
• proxy: Type of proxy, datacenter or residential (residential by default)
• country: Country of the proxy to use (US by default). Supported countries: us, gb, de, it, fr, ca, es, ru, jp, kr, in
• custom_proxy: Your own proxy URL in "http://user:password@host:port" format
• device: Type of device emulation. Supported values: desktop, mobile, tablet
• error_on_404: Return error on 404 HTTP status on the target page (false by default)
• error_on_redirect: Return error on redirect on the target page (false by default)
• js_script: Custom JavaScript code to execute on the target page

Error Handling

The server provides robust error handling:

• Automatic retries for transient errors
• Rate limit handling with backoff
• Detailed error messages
• Network resilience

Example error response:

{
  "content": [
    {
      "type": "text",
      "text": "API Error: 429 Too Many Requests"
    }
  ],
  "isError": true
}

Integration with LLMs

This server implements the Model Context Protocol, making it compatible with any MCP-enabled LLM platforms. You can configure your LLM to use these tools for web scraping tasks.

Example: Configuring Claude with MCP

const { Claude } = require('@anthropic-ai/sdk');
const { Client } = require('@modelcontextprotocol/sdk/client/index.js');
const { StdioClientTransport } = require('@modelcontextprotocol/sdk/client/stdio.js');

const claude = new Claude({
  apiKey: process.env.ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
});

const transport = new StdioClientTransport({
  command: 'npx',
  args: ['-y', 'webscraping-ai-mcp'],
  env: {
    WEBSCRAPING_AI_API_KEY: 'your-api-key'
  }
});

const client = new Client({
  name: 'claude-client',
  version: '1.0.0'
});

await client.connect(transport);

// Now you can use Claude with WebScraping.AI tools
const tools = await client.listTools();
const response = await claude.complete({
  prompt: 'What is the main topic of example.com?',
  tools: tools
});

Development

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/webscraping-ai/webscraping-ai-mcp-server.git
cd webscraping-ai-mcp-server

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Run tests
npm test

# Add your .env file
cp .env.example .env

# Start the inspector
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector node src/index.js

Contributing

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch
3. Run tests: npm test
4. Submit a pull request

License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details