webfetch vs the alternatives
Image sourcing has always been "pick one". webfetch picks all of them, ranks by license, and adds the missing safety net (attribution, audit trail, browser fallback with opt-in).
| Tool | Commercial safe? | Aggregates sources? | Attribution? | MCP native? | Self-host option? | Browser fallback? | Usage-based pricing? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| webfetch | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Google Images (retired API) | no | no | no | no | no | no | no |
| Unsplash API | yes | no | partial | no | no | no | no |
| Bing Image Search | partial | no | no | no | no | no | yes |
| Serper / SerpAPI | no | partial | no | no | no | yes | yes |
vs Google Images
Google's Image Search API was retired in 2011. The only way to script Google Images is through third-party scraping (SerpAPI, Serper) or the SERP-less workaround of a browser fetcher. None of these return license metadata. webfetch uses Google as a last resort (browser fallback, opt-in), and only after trying 19 licensed sources that Google doesn't surface.
vs Unsplash API
Unsplash is excellent — it's one of our 19 providers. But Unsplash alone can't cover editorial music art, public-domain museum scans, CC-licensed Flickr, government archives, or the long tail. One source is one bet.
vs Bing Image Search
Bing returns URLs without license. You have to interpret the "license" filter parameters yourself, and the filter is opaque. webfetch lets you use Bing as a provider (opt-in), and coerces host-based license heuristics, but never pretends it knows what it doesn't.
vs Serper / SerpAPI
Serper and SerpAPI are excellent SERP scrapers. They surface Google Images results with no license data. webfetch uses them (opt-in) as one of 19 providers and attaches a host-based heuristic + UNKNOWN tag so you know what you're shipping.