Home › Alternatives › ScrapingBee Alternatives
✓ last verified 2026-10-02 · every figure read from the provider’s live pricing page on that date · how we verify
ScrapingBee is a solid default (verified: $19/mo Hobby to $599/mo Business+), but its per-credit cost at entry ($0.25/1k on Hobby, $0.196/1k on Freelance) is beatable, and heavy JS-rendering multiplies credit burn.
ScrapingBee alternatives with verified pricing
| Provider | Best verified rate | Plan | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apify | $19.00/mo | Starter | $19 platform usage incl; Free $0 w/ $5 usage; Scale $199; Business $999; -10% annual |
| Scrape.do | $29.00/mo | Hobby | 250k credits ($0.11/1k) |
Which one, for what
- Scrape.do — verified $0.11/1k at entry vs ScrapingBee’s ~$0.196/1k on Freelance — roughly 45% cheaper per successful request at the low end, $0.06/1k at scale.
- Apify — verified $19/mo entry with a $5 free tier monthly — better for scheduled, multi-actor workflows.
- ScraperAPI — head-to-head competitor; pricing verification pending browser check — compare at checkout.
The open-source route (and the names Reddit will give you)
Every paid-API alternatives thread eventually lands on the free option: run it yourself. Scrapy (the Python crawling framework, stewarded by Zyte), Playwright and Puppeteer (browser automation for JS-heavy targets), Firecrawl (crawler output shaped for LLM pipelines) and no-code tools like Octoparse replace the API fee with your time: you own proxy sourcing, retries, CAPTCHA handling and the maintenance every site change forces. Against a verified $19–$29/month API entry, open source usually wins only when scraping is core to the product rather than a task. We name these because they are the real competitor, and we rank none of them because there is no price to verify.
What Reddit adds: r/webscraping and r/proxies threads on this comparison surface the failure stories landing pages omit — billing surprises, support latency, silent limit changes. Weight recent, specific complaints over star averages, then verify prices here, where every number carries a date and source.
Rankings here are computed from verified pricing and published terms. Performance benchmarking is on the methodology roadmap; until it ships, we say so rather than invent scores.
FAQ
What’s cheaper than ScrapingBee?
Scrape.do on every verified tier: $29/mo for 250k credits vs ScrapingBee’s $49/mo for 250k. Same nominal credits, 40% less money, verified 2026-10-02.
Why do ScrapingBee credits disappear fast?
JS rendering and premium proxies consume multiple credits per request under its published credit multipliers — factor multipliers, not sticker credits, when comparing.
Does ScrapingBee have a free plan?
A 1,000-credit trial at signup (no card), verified from its pricing page; it is a trial rather than a recurring free tier.