Best Web Scraping APIs in 2026: Verified Pricing and the Credit-Multiplier Trap
Update, October 20, 2026: from November 1, 2026, Searlo charges 5 credits instead of 1 for a page that has to be rendered (render: true, page actions, or automatic rendering when a plain fetch returns no usable content). Pages fetched without a browser stay at 1 credit, and every response says which kind each page was. The Searlo figures below show both prices; the other vendors' figures are as read on 2026-09-13.
The multiplier hiding in every headline rate
Search "firecrawl alternative" or "best web scraping api" and the page-one results are almost entirely dedicated product pages and third-party listicles, not documentation — this is a commercial category, and every vendor in it quotes a per-1,000 rate on its pricing page. What none of them put next to that rate, in the same font, is the multiplier: the real cost once a page needs JavaScript rendering or a premium add-on.
This comparison reads every vendor's own pricing page on 2026-09-13 and writes down what a basic request costs and — where the vendor actually publishes it — what the same request costs with rendering or premium add-ons turned on. Two vendors publish an exact multiplier. Two acknowledge one exists without naming it. One bills success only. One doesn't sell a per-page rate at all.
What we could verify, and what we could not
Every figure below was read off the vendor's own pricing page on 2026-09-13. Where a vendor doesn't publish a number, the cell says so — we did not fill a gap with a plausible guess.
Sources: firecrawl.dev/pricing, scrapingbee.com, scrapfly.io/pricing, zenrows.com/pricing, oxylabs.io, apify.com/pricing, and our own pricing page. All read 2026-09-13.
The arithmetic: what a real job actually costs
Headline rates are the cost of the easiest possible page — static HTML, no rendering. Here is the same 10,000-page job priced at each vendor's *real* rate for the two conditions that are actually published.
Job: 10,000 pages that need JavaScript rendering
Job: 10,000 pages that need a JSON-formatted structured response instead of markdown
Neither of those multipliers is a guess — ZenRows publishes 5x/10x/25x directly, and Firecrawl publishes "+4 credits" for JSON/Question/Highlight formats directly. Both numbers are simple arithmetic on the vendor's own published rate card, not a benchmark we ran ourselves.
Per-provider notes
Searlo — one published multiplier
$0.30 per 1,000 calls on the Scale pack (as low as $0.20 on Enterprise), one credit per /scrape or /map call, one credit per successfully-fetched /extract URL, one per page as a /crawl job runs — and that rate does not change for output format. From November 1, 2026, a page that has to be rendered costs 5 credits instead of 1, and the response marks those pages via: "browser"; until then a rendered page costs the same as any other. What it does not do: a no-code actor marketplace. If you want that specifically, this is the wrong tool.
Firecrawl — the closest like-for-like competitor
Firecrawl sells the same five capabilities as one product — scrape, crawl, map, extract, search — which is why it's the comparison used on our own Web Scraping API page. Its rates run from $3.20/1,000 (Hobby, annual billing) down to $0.599/1,000 (Scale, $599/month billed annually), and a basic scrape/crawl/map call is 1 credit. The catch is output format: asking for JSON, a direct question answer, or a highlight instead of plain markdown costs +4 credits per page — a 5x surcharge stated directly on their pricing page.
ScrapingBee — cheap baseline, unpublished ceiling
$19/month buys 75,000 credits ($0.253/1,000) on the Hobby plan, dropping to $0.083/1,000 on Business. A basic request is 1 credit. JavaScript rendering, premium add-ons and their AI-extraction feature all cost more, and ScrapingBee does not publish the multiplier on its pricing page — you find it out from a separate cost calculator or by running the request and reading the bill.
Scrapfly — genuinely the cheapest baseline here, with the same gap
$100/month for 1,000,000 credits on the Pro plan works out to $0.10 per 1,000 — cheaper than Searlo's headline rate, and worth saying plainly rather than hiding. The gap is the same one ScrapingBee has: per-request cost "depends on features enabled" (rendering, premium add-ons, country targeting), with no flat multiplier published and a separate cost estimator required. Structured extraction is also a separate product — the Extraction API — priced and billed apart from a basic scrape.
ZenRows — the one vendor who tells you the real number
Free tier is 5,000 credits, largest of the group. Build is $16/month for 45,000 credits ($0.356/1,000). What sets ZenRows apart is that it actually publishes what everyone else's page implies: JavaScript rendering is 5 credits (5x), its premium option is 10 credits (10x), and both together are 25 credits (25x) — stated in plain numbers on zenrows.com/pricing. Credit where due: that's the most honest pricing page in this comparison, even though the real number it discloses is steep.
Oxylabs — pay only for what worked, but no free runway
"Starting from $0.25 per 1,000 results," billed only on successful results — a genuinely strong headline rate, and one that sidesteps the render/render-not-render question by billing outcomes instead of requests. The trade-off is access: no permanent free tier, just a 2,000-result trial, and Oxylabs' broader platform leans toward enterprise procurement rather than a self-serve signup.
Apify — not a per-page product at all
Free is $5/month of usage; Starter, Scale and Business scale from $19 to $999/month of usage, billed in compute units (1 CU = 1GB RAM for one hour) at $0.20/CU down to $0.13/CU. There is no way to convert that into a $/page figure without picking a specific actor and running it — CU consumption depends entirely on what the actor does and how it's tuned, and Apify does not publish a conversion. If your job is "give me pages as structured data," that opacity is itself a cost; if your job needs a specific pre-built actor for a specific site, the marketplace is the point.
Methodology, and why there is no scraping-speed benchmark
What we did: read every vendor's own public pricing page on 2026-09-13, wrote down the baseline rate and the documented surcharge structure, and did the arithmetic on a fixed job size (10,000 pages) rather than compare providers at whatever volume happens to flatter each one.
What we did not do: run a live scrape-quality or success-rate benchmark. Sites change constantly, a benchmark run once is stale within days, and every vendor-run benchmark we've seen in this category is published by a party with an obvious interest in its result. If success rate on a specific target site is what decides your choice, the only trustworthy test is one you run yourself, against your actual target, this week — every vendor above (Searlo included, at /pricing) has a free tier large enough to do that.
Which to pick
• Want a published price for rendered pages, with no output-format multiplier — Searlo. $0.30/1,000 for a page fetched without rendering and, from November 1, 2026, $1.50/1,000 at the Scale pack for one that has to be rendered; one-time credits.
• Want the same five capabilities from the category's most visible name — Firecrawl, and budget for the +4-credit JSON surcharge if you need structured output.
• Want the cheapest possible baseline and can live with an unpublished real rate — Scrapfly or ScrapingBee, and price out your actual page mix with their cost calculator before committing to a plan.
• Want the multiplier told to you upfront, steep as it is — ZenRows; at least you can budget for 25x accurately.
• Want to pay only for pages that actually worked, and don't need a free tier — Oxylabs.
• Need a specific pre-built actor for a specific site, not a general fetch — Apify's marketplace is the point of that product; a flat-rate API is the wrong comparison.
Related reading: our Web Scraping API page for the full endpoint set and request/response shape, and our Firecrawl, Scrapfly, ScrapingBee, ZenRows, Apify and Oxylabs comparison pages for a closer look at each.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best web scraping API in 2026?
It depends on what you're optimizing for. Searlo publishes both of its rates: $0.30 per 1,000 for a page fetched without rendering and, from November 1, 2026, 5 credits ($1.50 per 1,000 at the Scale pack) for one that has to be rendered, with no output-format multiplier. Firecrawl matches the same five capabilities (scrape, crawl, map, extract, search) as one product but adds a 5x surcharge for JSON-formatted output. Scrapfly and ScrapingBee publish cheaper baseline rates but don't publish their real-world multiplier. ZenRows publishes the steepest multiplier (up to 25x) but is the most transparent about what it actually is.
Do web scraping APIs charge more for JavaScript-rendered pages?
Most do. ZenRows charges 5 credits instead of 1 (5x) for JavaScript rendering and 10x for its premium option, both stated directly on its pricing page. ScrapingBee and Scrapfly both say rendering costs more without publishing the multiplier. Firecrawl does not surcharge for rendering itself — its surcharge is on output format (JSON/Question/Highlight), not on the render. Searlo did not either until November 1, 2026; from then, a page that has to be rendered costs 5 credits instead of 1, a published 5x.
What is the cheapest web scraping API?
By published baseline rate alone, Scrapfly ($0.10/1,000 on its Pro plan) and ScrapingBee ($0.083/1,000 on Business) are cheaper than Searlo's $0.30/1,000 headline. Whether that holds for your actual job depends on an unpublished multiplier neither vendor states — the honest answer is to price your real page mix with their cost calculators before assuming the baseline rate is what you'll pay.
Is Firecrawl the best Firecrawl alternative comparison point?
It's the closest like-for-like product — the same five capabilities (scrape, crawl, map, extract, search) sold as one API, which is why most "firecrawl alternative" searches are really asking about this shape of product rather than a narrower scraping tool. Its rates run $3.20/1,000 (Hobby) to $0.599/1,000 (Scale), with a published +4-credit (5x) surcharge for JSON-formatted output that Searlo does not charge.
How much does it cost to scrape 10,000 pages that need JavaScript rendering?
On Searlo, $7.98 one-time until October 31, 2026; from November 1, 2026, a page that has to be rendered costs 5 credits, so the job is 50,000 credits, $27.96 one-time (two Starter and two Micro packs). On ZenRows, roughly $17.80 at the Build plan's published rate once you apply their stated 5x multiplier for JavaScript rendering. From November 1 both publish a 5x render multiplier, so the gap is the baseline rate, and Searlo's credits are one-time rather than a monthly plan.
Does a web scraping API use AI to extract data?
Some offer AI-assisted extraction as an add-on (ScrapingBee's AI extraction, Scrapfly's Extraction API), typically at extra cost. Searlo's /extract endpoint reads a page's own schema.org JSON-LD, Open Graph and meta tags first — deterministic and free to compute — and only falls back to a model for fields the page didn't declare, billing per URL fetched rather than per model call.