Webustler

Webustler

MCP server for web scraping that actually works. Extracts clean, LLM-ready markdown from any URL — even Cloudflare-protected sites.

Why Webustler? • Features • Installation • Usage • Output

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🤔 Why Webustler?

Most scraping tools fail on protected sites. Webustler doesn't.

❌ Other Tools

• Block on Cloudflare
• Require API keys
• Charge per request
• Return messy HTML
• No retry logic

✅ Webustler

• Bypasses protection automatically
• 100% free & self-hosted
• Unlimited requests
• Clean, LLM-ready markdown
• Smart retry with fallback

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📊 Comparison

| Feature | Webustler | Firecrawl | ScrapeGraphAI | Crawl4AI | Deepcrawl | |:--------|:---------:|:---------:|:-------------:|:--------:|:---------:| | Anti-bot bypass | ✅ | ⚠️ | ❌ | ⚠️ | ❌ | | Cloudflare support | ✅ | ⚠️ | ❌ | ⚠️ | ❌ | | No API key needed | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ⚠️ | | Self-hosted | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | MCP native | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | | Token optimized | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | | Rich metadata | ✅ | ✅ | ⚠️ | ⚠️ | ✅ | | Link categorization | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | | File detection | ✅ | ⚠️ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | | Reading time | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | | Zero config | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | | Free forever | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |

✅ Full support · ⚠️ Partial/Limited · ❌ Not supported

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✨ Features

🛡️ Smart Fallback System

Primary method fails? Automatically retries with anti-bot bypass. No manual intervention needed.

📋 Rich Metadata Extraction

• Title, description, author
• Open Graph & Twitter Cards
• Published/modified time
• Language, keywords, robots

🔗 Link Categorization

Separates internal links (same domain) from external links. Perfect for crawling workflows.

📁 File Download Detection

Detects PDFs, images, archives, and other file types. Returns structured info instead of garbled binary.

🧹 Token-Optimized Output

Removes ads, sidebars, popups, base64 images, cookie banners, and all the junk LLMs don't need.

📊 Table Preservation

Data tables stay intact in markdown. No more broken layouts.

⏱️ Content Analysis

Word count and reading time calculated automatically. Know your content at a glance.

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📦 Installation

git clone https://github.com/drruin/webustler.git
cd webustler
docker build -t webustler .

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🔧 MCP Configuration

Claude Desktop

Add to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "webustler": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": ["run", "-i", "--rm", "webustler"]
    }
  }
}

Claude Code

claude mcp add webustler -- docker run -i --rm webustler

Cursor

Add to your Cursor MCP settings:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "webustler": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": ["run", "-i", "--rm", "webustler"]
    }
  }
}

Windsurf

Add to your Windsurf MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "webustler": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": ["run", "-i", "--rm", "webustler"]
    }
  }
}

With Custom Timeout

Pass the TIMEOUT environment variable (in seconds):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "webustler": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": ["run", "-i", "--rm", "-e", "TIMEOUT=180", "webustler"]
    }
  }
}

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🚀 Usage

Once configured, the scrape tool is available to your MCP client:

Scrape https://example.com and summarize the content

Extract all links from https://news.ycombinator.com

Get the article from https://protected-site.com/article

Webustler handles everything automatically — including Cloudflare challenges.

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📄 Output Format

Returns clean markdown with YAML frontmatter:

---
sourceURL: https://example.com/article
statusCode: 200
title: Article Title
description: Meta description here
author: John Doe
language: en
wordCount: 1542
readingTime: 8 mins
publishedTime: 2025-01-01
openGraph:
  title: OG Title
  image: https://example.com/og.png
twitter:
  card: summary_large_image
internalLinksCount: 42
externalLinksCount: 15
imagesCount: 8
---

# Article Title

Clean markdown content here with **formatting** preserved...

| Column 1 | Column 2 |
|----------|----------|
| Tables   | Work too |

---
## Internal Links

- https://example.com/page1
- https://example.com/page2

---
## External Links

- https://other-site.com/reference

---
## Images

- https://example.com/image1.jpg

---

⚙️ How It Works

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                                                                 │
│    URL ──► Primary Fetch ──► Blocked? ──► Fallback Fetch       │
│                                  │              │               │
│                                  ▼              ▼               │
│                              Success ◄──────────┘               │
│                                  │                              │
│                                  ▼                              │
│                          Clean HTML                             │
│                                  │                              │
│                                  ▼                              │
│              ┌───────────────────┼───────────────────┐          │
│              ▼                   ▼                   ▼          │
│         Metadata            Markdown             Links          │
│              │                   │                   │          │
│              └───────────────────┼───────────────────┘          │
│                                  ▼                              │
│                          Format Output                          │
│                                                                 │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

🔄 Retry Logic

| Method | Attempts | Delay | Purpose | |--------|:--------:|:-----:|---------| | Primary | 2 | 5s | Fast extraction | | Fallback | 3 | 5s | Anti-bot bypass |

Total: Up to 5 attempts before failure. Handles timeouts, rate limits, and challenges.

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🧹 Content Cleaning

Click to see what gets removed

Tags Removed

| Category | Elements | |----------|----------| | Scripts | `, | | Styles | | | Navigation | , , , | | Interactive | , , , , | | Media | , , , , , , ` |

Selectors Removed

• Sidebars ([class*='sidebar'], [id*='sidebar'])
• Comments ([class*='comment'])
• Ads ([class*='ad-'], [class*='advertisement'])
• Social ([class*='social'], [class*='share'])
• Popups ([class*='popup'], [class*='modal'])
• Cookie banners ([class*='cookie'])
• Newsletters ([class*='newsletter'])
• Promos ([class*='banner'], [class*='promo'])

Also Removed

• Base64 inline images (massive token savings)
• Empty elements
• Excessive newlines (max 3 consecutive)

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🔧 Configuration

| Variable | Default | Description | |----------|:-------:|-------------| | TIMEOUT | 120 | Request timeout in seconds |

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🏆 Why Not Just Use...

Firecrawl?

Firecrawl is excellent but:

• Requires API key and paid plans for serious usage
• Limited anti-bot capabilities
• More complex setup with environment variables

ScrapeGraphAI?

ScrapeGraphAI uses LLMs to parse pages:

• Requires LLM API keys (OpenAI, etc.) for all operations
• Adds latency (LLM calls) and cost (token usage)
• Webustler is deterministic — faster, cheaper, predictable

Crawl4AI?

Crawl4AI is a powerful open-source crawler but:

• Requires more configuration to get started
• LLM features require additional API keys
• Webustler works out of the box with zero config

Deepcrawl?

Deepcrawl is a great Firecrawl alternative but:

• Hosted API requires API key (self-host is free)
• No anti-bot bypass capabilities
• REST API only, not an MCP server

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📁 Project Structure

webustler/
├── server.py           # MCP server
├── Dockerfile          # Docker image
├── requirements.txt    # Dependencies
├── LICENSE             # MIT License
├── images/             # Assets
│   └── image.png
└── README.md           # Documentation

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⚖️ Ethical Use & Disclaimer

Webustler is provided as a tool for security research, data interoperability, and educational purposes.

• Responsibility: As I, the developer of Webustler do not condone unauthorized scraping or the violation of any website's Terms of Service (TOS).
• Compliance: Users are solely responsible for ensuring that their use of this tool complies with local laws (such as the CFAA or GDPR) and the intellectual property rights of the content owners.
• Respect Robots.txt: I encourage all users to respect robots.txt files and implement reasonable crawl delays to avoid putting undue stress on web servers.

This project is an exploration of web technologies and challenge-response mechanisms. Use it responsibly.

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📜 License

MIT License — use it however you want.

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MCP server for LLMs. Works everywhere. No API keys. No limits.

Made with care for the AI community

Source & license

This open-source MCP server is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: DrRuin
• Source: DrRuin/webustler
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.