The big scraping APIs - Firecrawl, ScrapingBee, Bright Data, Apify, Zyte - share one architecture under different pricing and branding: fetch a URL, render the page, extract the HTML. That architecture is built around what an anonymous visitor sees. Most of these APIs will take your cookies or run a scripted login, but the unit of work is still a page, and keeping the session alive is your problem.
No order histories. No seller dashboards. No B2B portal pricing. No personalized inventory feeds. No member-only listings.
The industry calls this "web data." Most of it is logged-out data. Generic scraping APIs stop at the login page. Anakin's Wire is built to go past it: it calls the same JSON endpoints a site's own frontend calls, as the signed-in user who authorized the run, so account data comes back as structured JSON. That is authenticated web scraping on the account owner's terms, and Wire keeps none of the personal data it returns.
The data that matters was never on the public page
When businesses talk about needing web data, they rarely mean public pages. They mean their own data inside platforms that didn't build an export:
- Their order history in a marketplace with no API
- Their B2B supplier portal with custom pricing their competitors can't see
- Their seller dashboard with no CSV download
- Their SaaS platform data the vendor's API tier doesn't expose
Public-page scraping answers "what does the internet say?" Account-scoped access answers "what does my data say inside this platform?"
Most SaaS and marketplace platforms have no public API, or a crippled one that doesn't expose the same data their own frontend does. The data exists - it's right there in the dashboard - but the platform never built a way to get it out programmatically.
Why generic scrapers can't just add a login feature
The obvious fix - "just log in first, then scrape" - breaks down at production scale. The scraping stack is built around stateless page-fetching: URL in, HTML out. Sessions break that model.
Authenticated sessions require state management across requests, expiry handling and re-authentication, per-account behavior differences, and request consistency across a sequence of calls. Bolting login onto a stateless page renderer yourself produces a fragile browser puppet. Cookie-jar injection works at n=1. At production volume, you're managing session lifecycle, handling expiry mid-workflow, recovering from auth challenges, and rebuilding from scratch every time the target site redesigns its login flow. Anakin handles the page-level version of this as a managed feature: with Browser Sessions, you log in once through a real browser, the session is saved, and later scrape requests reuse it. Wire works one layer down, on the calls behind the page.
The deeper reframe: pages are a rendering artifact
There's a more fundamental issue with HTML scraping that isn't obvious until you open DevTools.
Modern websites aren't made of pages. They're made of API calls. Open the Network tab on any major site and watch what happens: the page you see is assembled from a sequence of structured JSON responses the browser fetches and paints onto the DOM.
The HTML is a rendering of the data, not the data itself. Scraping HTML is scraping a screenshot of the truth.
Everything a page shows - search results, prices, order rows, inventory counts - arrived as a structured JSON payload before the browser painted it. That payload is available directly, without the browser.
Browser layer vs. network layer
That gives two very different architectures:
Browser-layer scraping (how page-scraping APIs work): load the full page, wait for JavaScript to execute, parse the DOM, extract what you need, hope the CSS class names didn't change in the last deployment.
Network-layer access (Wire's model): identify the exact endpoints the site's own frontend calls, call them directly, receive the same structured JSON the frontend receives.
The practical differences at production scale:
- Speed: a single HTTP call vs. a full browser render. Orders of magnitude faster.
- Cost: no browser fleet burning CPU to paint pixels nobody looks at.
- Stability: sites redesign their UI constantly. Their internal API endpoints change far less often, because their own apps depend on them. A selector breaks on every frontend deploy. The underlying data call typically doesn't.
- Fidelity: the JSON payload often contains more data than the page renders. Fields the UI drops on the floor are still in the response.
Some flows genuinely need a browser: CAPTCHAs, certain multi-step auth challenges, pages that don't expose their data via background API calls. Wire has browser-based execution as a fallback for these cases. The network layer handles the vast majority of production workloads. The browser is the fallback, not the foundation.
Wire's action model
Wire is built on this architecture, with one addition: it operates at the level of actions, not URLs.
A scraping API's unit of work is a page. Wire's unit of work is a named, typed operation against a platform: am_search_products, am_product_reviews, am_view_cart. Structured input in, structured JSON out. Versioned. Documented. Priced per call.
What this produces is a public API for platforms that never shipped one. The platform doesn't need to build it - Wire builds it by identifying and wrapping the network calls the platform's own frontend already makes.
# Dispatch an action - search Amazon for a product
curl -X POST https://api.anakin.io/v1/wire/task \
-H "X-API-Key: $ANAKIN_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"action_id": "am_search_products", "params": {"query": "noise cancelling headphones", "limit": 5}}'
# Response (202) - poll the job until status is completed or failed
{
"status": "processing",
"job_id": "7c3f1a2b-4d5e-6f7a-8b9c-0d1e2f3a4b5c",
"poll_url": "/v1/wire/jobs/7c3f1a2b-4d5e-6f7a-8b9c-0d1e2f3a4b5c"
}
# Poll for the result
curl https://api.anakin.io/v1/wire/jobs/7c3f1a2b-4d5e-6f7a-8b9c-0d1e2f3a4b5c \
-H "X-API-Key: $ANAKIN_API_KEY"
# A completed job returns {"status": "completed", "data": {...}, "credits_used": ..., "execution_ms": ...}
# Trimmed result from a run on 25 Oct 2026 (2 of 5 products, key fields only)
{
"query": "noise cancelling headphones",
"page": 1,
"sort": "featured",
"returned": 5,
"products": [
{"asin": "B0C3HCD34R", "title": "soundcore by Anker Q20i Hybrid Active Noise Cancelling Headphones, Black",
"price": 39.97, "list_price": 69.99, "currency": "USD", "rating": 4.5, "review_count": 78154},
{"asin": "B0HJ5K8WN4", "title": "Bluetooth Headphones, Hybrid Active Noise Cancelling Over Ear Headphones",
"price": 20.98, "list_price": 199.99, "currency": "USD", "rating": 4.5, "review_count": 533}
]
}The result is structured JSON specific to the action. am_search_products returns a products array along with the query, page and sort it ran with. am_view_cart returns the signed-in user's cart. No HTML to parse. No selector to maintain. Every action's parameters and auth requirement are listed in the Wire API reference.
As of 25 October 2026 the catalog lists more than 960 sites and 5,200 actions across research, finance, shopping, marketplaces, travel and 20 other categories. (Anakin Wire catalog)
Authenticated identities: your data, now with an API
The unlock is the identity model.
Wire actions can run as an authenticated user. A customer connects their own account - their credentials, their session - and actions execute inside that session. Account-scoped data (order history, dashboard metrics, portal pricing, inventory feeds) becomes API-accessible for the first time. Amazon's am_view_cart, for example, only runs with a connected account: you pass a credential_id from your Wire identities on the task call.
Credentials are stored once as a named identity, AES-256 encrypted at rest, injected at runtime, and never returned by the API. The secret never crosses the API boundary after the initial save.
The scope boundary is simple: Wire reaches data you already have access to, but couldn't get programmatically. It doesn't reach data you don't have permission to access.
Wire does not collect, aggregate, resell, or retain user data. When an action executes, it returns that user's own data to them. No personal information is stored by Wire as a result of running an action - credentials and retrieved data are used only to execute the action you requested, nothing else. This is both a design principle and a legal boundary.
Write actions, not just read
Page scrapers are read-only by design. Wire's action model isn't.
Where relevant and available in the catalog, Wire actions support writes as well as reads. Submitting a form, updating a listing, triggering a workflow inside a platform: same model, same API call, same identity system. Agents need to act on the web, not only read it.
Built for AI agents
More API calls now come from AI agents, not only from developer pipelines. Wire's action model is shaped for this: a discoverable catalog with self-describing schemas, structured JSON payloads without raw HTML, minimal round trips. An agent that knows which action to call executes it the same way it calls any tool.
Wire ships inside the Anakin MCP server. One install and an agent gets a wire_action tool that covers every site in the catalog - no SDK glue, no per-platform integration work. Compatible with Claude, Cursor, Cline, Windsurf, Zed, VS Code, and any client that speaks the Model Context Protocol.
Most scraping APIs were built for ETL pipelines. Wire is built for agents.
On authorization and legal scope
Wire runs actions using the customer's own credentials, on the customer's own accounts, at the customer's explicit direction. The access model is user-authorized, not bulk or anonymous.
This puts Wire in the same category as other user-authorized access tools: email clients accessing a user's mailbox via IMAP, Open Banking platforms like Plaid accessing bank data via permissioned credentials, password managers interacting with sites on the user's behalf. The common thread: the user authorizes access to their own data - not a third party accessing data they have no relationship to.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do most scraping APIs stop at the login page?
Generic scraping APIs are built around fetching and rendering a page. Several accept cookies or a scripted login, but the session lifecycle (expiry, re-authentication, login-flow redesigns) stays with you, and that gets fragile at production volume.
What does network-layer access mean?
It means calling the same endpoints a site's own frontend calls and receiving the JSON it receives, instead of rendering the page and parsing HTML. Wire wraps those calls as named actions such as am_search_products.
How does Wire handle my credentials?
Credentials are saved once as a named identity, AES-256 encrypted at rest, injected at runtime, and never returned by the API. You pass a credential_id on the task call, and Wire only reaches data that the authenticated account can already see.
Can Wire perform write actions?
Yes, where the catalog supports them: submitting a form, updating a listing, triggering a workflow. Writes and account-connected runs use the keyed POST /v1/wire/task flow. Read-only actions can also run with no key through Zero Touch.
How do AI agents use Wire?
Through the Anakin MCP server, which gives Claude, Cursor, Cline, Windsurf, Zed, VS Code and other MCP clients a wire_action tool covering every site in the catalog. One command installs it: npx -y @anakin-io/mcp init --all.
How much does a Wire call cost?
Wire's product page lists $0.001 per call against $0.47 for a browser agent equivalent, a 470x difference. The Starter tier is free with 300 credits and no card required.
Get started
Generic scraping APIs stop at the login page because their unit of work is a page. Wire's unit of work is an action, run as you. At $0.001 per Wire call vs. $0.47 for a browser agent equivalent, the cost difference is 470x. (Anakin Wire) The catalog is public and searchable by site and action type, read-only actions run with no key through Zero Touch, and the Starter tier includes 300 credits at no cost - no card required.
For MCP workflows, the MCP setup guide covers installation in one command: npx -y @anakin-io/mcp init --all.