Web Scraping Pricing 2026: 9 Platforms Compared (From $0.13/1K)
Scraping costs range from $0 to thousands of dollars per month depending on the platform, scale, and whether you account for developer time. This guide breaks down the real cost of every major web scraping platform — Apify, Bright Data, Octoparse, Firecrawl, ScraperAPI, ScrapingBee, Zyte, IPRoyal, Oxylabs, and self-hosted infrastructure — with cost-per-page analysis and total cost of ownership (TCO) calculations to help you pick the right tool for your budget.
The three cheapest entry tiers in May 2026 are Zyte API at $0.13 per 1,000 simple HTTP requests pay-as-you-go, Firecrawl Hobby at $16/mo for 5,000 pages, and Apify Starter at $29/mo with $29 of credits. The most expensive enterprise plan visibly listed is Apify Business at $999/mo before Enterprise custom pricing.
Quick comparison: web scraping pricing at a glance
Before diving into each platform, here is a high-level summary of the most common tiers:
| Platform | Free tier | Entry paid plan | Mid-tier | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apify (pricing) | $5 credits/mo | $29/mo | $199/mo | Full-stack scraping platform |
| Bright Data (pricing) | Trial credits | $4/GB PAYG | $499/mo committed | Proxy infrastructure at scale |
| Octoparse | 10 free tasks | $69/mo annual ($89 monthly) | $249/mo | No-code visual scraping |
| Firecrawl (pricing) | 1,000 credits/mo | $16/mo | $83/mo | LLM-ready markdown extraction |
| ScraperAPI | 1,000 calls/mo | $49/mo | $149/mo | Simple API proxy layer |
| ScrapingBee | 1,000 credits/mo | $49/mo | $99/mo | JavaScript rendering API |
| Zyte | PAYG only | $0.13/1K req PAYG | $100+/mo commit | Managed crawling at scale |
| IPRoyal (pricing) | None | $1.75/GB residential | $1.00/1K Web Unblocker | Pay-as-you-go proxies |
| Oxylabs | Datacenter trial | $6/GB residential | Custom | Premium residential proxies |
| Self-hosted | VPS cost only | ~$20/mo VPS | ~$80/mo+ | Full control, high DevOps cost |
The cheapest scraping tool depends on your use case. For occasional scraping under 10,000 pages/month, Apify's free tier or Firecrawl's Hobby plan is hard to beat. For proxy-heavy workloads, Bright Data's $4/GB pay-as-you-go residential rate (with 50% RESIGB50 promo active) avoids over-paying on fixed seats. For non-technical teams, Octoparse's visual builder at $69/mo annual reduces developer cost entirely.
Apify pricing
Apify is a cloud platform for building, deploying, and running web scrapers (called "Actors"). Its billing model uses platform credits that cover compute time, proxy traffic, storage, and dataset reads/writes.
Apify plan tiers (verified May 2026 against apify.com/pricing)
| Plan | Monthly price | Included credits | Per-CU rate | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $5 credits | $0.20/CU | Prototyping, small projects |
| Starter | $29/mo | $29 credits | $0.16/CU | Freelancers, small automations |
| Scale | $199/mo | $199 credits | $0.16/CU | Growing startups, regular scraping |
| Business | $999/mo | $999 credits | $0.13/CU | Agencies, mid-market data teams |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | Large-scale pipelines, SLAs |
Credits cover everything: each Actor run burns credits based on memory size and duration. A lightweight Actor running 128 MB for 1 minute costs roughly 0.005 credits. Most scraping tasks run between 0.01–0.1 credits per page depending on JavaScript rendering and proxy usage. All paid plans operate on a flexible pay-as-you-go overage model — you keep running past the included credits at the plan's per-CU rate.
Cost-per-page estimate (Apify):
- Simple HTML scraping: ~$0.0005–$0.002 per page
- JavaScript-rendered pages (headless Chrome): ~$0.003–$0.01 per page
- With residential proxies: add ~$1.50–$3 per GB of traffic
At the $199/mo Scale plan with $199 in credits at $0.16/CU, a team scraping 100,000 simple HTML pages per month pays roughly $0.001–$0.002 per page — competitive with the mid-tier of most alternatives.
Discounts: Apify offers a startup program (30% off Scale), a student program (50% off paid plans), and nonprofit pricing. See the Apify discounts guide for eligibility requirements.
For a deeper breakdown of Apify's credit system and Actor billing, see the Apify pricing guide.
Bright Data pricing
Bright Data is the largest commercial proxy network in the world, with 400 million+ residential IPs across 195 countries. Unlike Apify, Bright Data is primarily a proxy and data infrastructure provider — you pay for bandwidth, not compute time.
Bright Data proxy pricing (verified May 2026 against brightdata.com/pricing)
| Tier | Monthly commitment | Included residential GB | $/GB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pay-as-you-go | $0 | — | $4.00/GB (50% off with RESIGB50; list $8/GB) |
| Starter | $499/mo | 141 GB | $3.50/GB |
| Professional | $999/mo | 332 GB | $3.00/GB |
| Enterprise | $1,999/mo | 798 GB | $2.50/GB |
Pricing scales significantly with commitment. Teams that lock in the $1,999/mo Enterprise commit get 798 GB at $2.50/GB, versus $4/GB pay-as-you-go. Datacenter, ISP, and mobile proxy lines are sold separately — check the Bright Data pricing index for current $/GB on each network.
Bright Data also offers managed datasets and the Web Unlocker API, which abstracts proxy rotation, CAPTCHA solving, and browser fingerprinting into a single endpoint.
Cost-per-page estimate (Bright Data):
- Datacenter (simple pages): ~$0.001–$0.003 per page
- Residential (JavaScript-heavy): ~$0.05–$0.20 per page (due to bandwidth cost)
- Web Unlocker (all-in): ~$0.003–$0.008 per page
Bright Data is not the cheapest option for low-volume use. There is no meaningful free tier — only trial credits. It becomes cost-competitive only above $200/mo in committed spend, where volume discounts kick in.
For a head-to-head comparison with Apify across features and pricing, see Apify vs Bright Data.
Octoparse pricing
Octoparse is a no-code visual web scraping tool with a point-and-click interface. You build scrapers by clicking on elements directly in a browser preview — no coding required.
Octoparse plan tiers (verified May 2026 against octoparse.com/pricing)
| Plan | Annual price | Concurrent cloud runs | Tasks | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 (forever) | 2 local | 10 | Hobby projects, evaluation |
| Standard | $69/mo (billed annually, ~16% off monthly) | 3 cloud | 100 | Small businesses, non-technical users |
| Professional | $249/mo (billed annually) | 20 cloud | 250 | Agencies, data analysts |
| Enterprise | Custom | Unlimited | Custom | Large teams |
Octoparse also includes cloud scraping (tasks run on Octoparse servers), residential proxies, automatic CAPTCHA solving, scheduled scraping, and data export to CSV/Excel/JSON/Google Sheets.
Cost-per-page estimate (Octoparse):
- The platform bills by seat, not by page. At $69/mo annual Standard with 3 cloud concurrents running 8 hours/day, you can extract hundreds of thousands of records monthly.
- Approximate cost for 500K simple pages: ~$0.00014 per page (far cheaper per page than API-based tools at scale)
- The fixed cost structure means Octoparse is expensive for low-volume use and very cheap for high-volume steady-state scraping
Limitation: Octoparse is a Windows/macOS desktop app with cloud execution. It lacks the programmability of API-based tools — no custom logic, no integration into code pipelines without additional effort.
For a structured comparison across features, see Apify vs Octoparse.
Firecrawl pricing
Firecrawl converts web pages into clean markdown or structured JSON, optimized for feeding data into LLM pipelines and RAG applications. It handles JavaScript rendering, PDF extraction, and site crawling behind a simple API.
Firecrawl plan tiers (verified May 2026 against firecrawl.dev/pricing)
| Plan | Monthly price (annual) | Credits / pages included | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 1,000 credits/mo | Evaluation, hobby projects |
| Hobby | $16/mo | 5,000 credits/mo | Indie developers, small AI apps |
| Standard | $83/mo | 100,000 credits/mo | Production AI pipelines |
| Growth | $333/mo | 500,000 credits/mo | Scaling AI data teams |
| Scale | $599/mo | 1,000,000 credits/mo | Unlimited scraping concurrency |
| Enterprise | Custom | Unlimited | Large data orgs, dedicated SLA |
Cost-per-page estimate (Firecrawl):
- Hobby plan: ~$0.0032 per page ($16 / 5,000)
- Standard plan: ~$0.00083 per page ($83 / 100,000)
- Growth plan: ~$0.00067 per page ($333 / 500,000)
- Scale plan: ~$0.0006 per page ($599 / 1,000,000)
Firecrawl's per-page cost drops sharply at the Standard tier. For teams building AI-powered applications that consume web content, it is among the most cost-effective options for clean, structured output.
If your use case involves feeding scraped content into LLMs or building RAG pipelines, see the RAG data pipeline guide for a broader architectural overview.
ScraperAPI pricing
ScraperAPI provides a proxy-rotation-as-a-service layer: you send HTTP requests to their endpoint and they handle IP rotation, CAPTCHA solving, and header management. It targets developers who want to add proxy rotation to existing scripts with minimal code changes.
ScraperAPI plan tiers (verified May 2026 against scraperapi.com/pricing)
| Plan | Monthly price | API credits | Concurrent | Geo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 (7-day trial) | 1,000/mo | 5 | US/EU |
| Hobby | $49/mo | 100,000/mo | 20 | US/EU |
| Startup | $149/mo | 1,000,000/mo | 50 | US/EU |
| Business | $299/mo | 3,000,000/mo | 100 | Global geotargeting |
| Scaling | $475/mo | 5,000,000/mo | 200 | Global |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | Global |
Credits vary by page type: 1 credit for basic HTML, 5–10 credits for JavaScript rendering, 25 credits for premium domains (e.g., Amazon, Google).
Cost-per-page estimate (ScraperAPI):
- Basic HTML (1 credit): ~$0.0001 at Business tier ($299 / 3M credits / 1 credit per page)
- JavaScript rendering (10 credits): ~$0.001–$0.003 depending on plan
- Premium domains (25 credits): ~$0.003–$0.01
ScraperAPI is straightforward and developer-friendly, but its credit multipliers for JavaScript and premium sites make costs unpredictable for complex sites. It lacks storage, scheduling, and data pipelines — it's a proxy layer, not a full platform.
ScrapingBee pricing
ScrapingBee is similar to ScraperAPI but focuses more heavily on headless browser rendering and Google SERP extraction. Its API wraps Chromium and handles proxy rotation automatically.
ScrapingBee plan tiers (verified May 2026 against scrapingbee.com/pricing)
| Plan | Monthly price | API credits | Concurrent | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 (no card) | 1,000 trial credits | 5 | Evaluation |
| Freelance | $49/mo | 250,000/mo | 10 | Individual developers |
| Startup | $99/mo | 1,000,000/mo | 50 | Small apps |
| Business | $249/mo | 3,000,000/mo | 100 | Production workloads |
| Business+ | $599/mo | 8,000,000/mo | 200 | High-volume teams |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | Large deployments |
Credits work similarly to ScraperAPI: 1 credit for basic HTML, 5 credits for JavaScript rendering, 10–75 credits for premium domains.
Cost-per-page estimate (ScrapingBee):
- Basic HTML: ~$0.00008 per page at Business tier
- JavaScript rendering: ~$0.0004 per page at Business tier
- Premium domains: ~$0.002–$0.02 per page
ScrapingBee's Business tier offers better per-credit pricing than Freelance or Startup. For straightforward JavaScript-rendered pages at scale, it competes well with ScraperAPI. For Google SERP scraping specifically, its dedicated Google API feature is a notable differentiator.
Zyte pricing
Zyte (formerly Scrapinghub) is one of the oldest professional web scraping platforms. It offers the Zyte API (managed scraping endpoint), Scrapy Cloud (hosted Python/Scrapy pipelines), and enterprise crawling services.
Zyte API pricing (verified May 2026 against zyte.com/pricing)
Zyte API prices per successful response. Pay-as-you-go rates (with monthly commitments of $100, $200, $500, or Enterprise offering further discounts):
| Anti-bot difficulty | HTTP response ($/1,000) | Browser rendered ($/1,000) |
|---|---|---|
| Simple | $0.13 | $1.01 |
| Easy | $0.23 | $2.01 |
| Moderate | $0.44 | $4.02 |
| Complex | $0.70 | $8.04 |
| Advanced | $1.27 | $16.08 |
At the $500/mo commit tier, HTTP pricing drops to as low as $0.06 per 1,000 simple requests. Scrapy Cloud (hosted Scrapy spiders) is sold separately for Python/Scrapy teams.
Cost-per-page estimate (Zyte):
- Simple HTTP: ~$0.00013 per page (cheapest on this list for plain HTML)
- Browser-rendered (simple): ~$0.001 per page
- Advanced browser-rendered (sites with heavy anti-bot): ~$0.016 per page
Zyte's tiered "difficulty" model gives it the lowest entry price for easy sites but climbs fastest as you hit Advanced anti-bot. AutoExtract structured data is available through the same API for extracting product, article, and job-listing schemas without writing parsers.
For a detailed comparison of Apify versus Zyte across architecture and pricing, see Apify vs Zyte.
Self-hosted web scraping costs
Self-hosting a web scraping stack eliminates platform fees but replaces them with infrastructure costs and significant developer time. The typical self-hosted stack includes:
- A VPS or cloud server (runs your scrapers)
- A proxy provider (residential or datacenter, billed per GB)
- A job queue (Redis, RabbitMQ, or SQS)
- A database for result storage (PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or S3)
- Optional: a headless browser service (Browserless, Splash)
VPS + proxy cost estimate
| Component | Cost estimate |
|---|---|
| VPS (4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM — e.g., Liquid Web) | $40–$80/mo |
| Residential proxy (100 GB/mo) | $300–$500/mo (at retail rates) |
| Storage (500 GB S3 or equivalent) | $10–$15/mo |
| Browserless (self-hosted) | $0 (OSS) or $50–$150/mo (cloud) |
| Total infrastructure | $350–$750/mo |
The hidden cost: developer time
The biggest cost of self-hosted scraping is engineering time, not infrastructure. A realistic estimate:
| Task | Hours/month |
|---|---|
| Anti-bot maintenance (adapting to site changes) | 10–20 hours |
| Infrastructure upkeep (updates, monitoring) | 4–8 hours |
| New scraper development | Variable |
| Debugging failures and downtime recovery | 5–10 hours |
| Total monthly maintenance | 19–38 hours |
At an average developer rate of $75/hour, that is $1,425–$2,850/month in labor for a moderately complex self-hosted setup. Even at $50/hour, maintenance costs $950–$1,900/month.
Self-hosted is only cost-effective when:
- You already have dedicated engineering resources budgeted for infrastructure
- Your volume exceeds $3,000–$5,000/month in managed platform costs
- You have strict data sovereignty or compliance requirements
- You are building a scraping product for resale
For most teams scraping under 10M pages per month, a managed platform is cheaper when total cost of ownership is calculated correctly.
For proxy rotation strategies and best practices when adding proxy infrastructure to any stack, see the dedicated proxy rotation guide.
Cost-per-page comparison
The table below estimates the cost per 1,000 pages for each platform at their mid-tier plans. All estimates assume standard JavaScript-rendered pages (no premium anti-bot protection required).
| Platform | Plan | $/1,000 pages (HTML) | $/1,000 pages (JS render) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apify | Scale ($199/mo) | ~$0.50 | ~$3.00 | Credits cover compute + proxies |
| Bright Data | Residential PAYG ($4/GB) | ~$0.40 | ~$2.00 | Bandwidth-based billing |
| Octoparse | Standard ($69/mo annual) | ~$0.05 | ~$0.05 | Flat rate regardless of volume |
| Firecrawl | Standard ($83/mo) | ~$0.83 | ~$0.83 | Per-page billing, no render premium |
| ScraperAPI | Startup ($149/mo) | ~$0.15 | ~$1.50 | Render credits cost 10× |
| ScrapingBee | Startup ($99/mo) | ~$0.10 | ~$0.50 | Similar credit multiplier |
| Zyte | API PAYG | ~$0.13 | ~$1.01 | Cheapest entry for simple HTML |
| Self-hosted | VPS + proxies | ~$0.03 | ~$0.30 | Excludes developer time entirely |
Key takeaway: Zyte API at $0.13/1K simple HTTP requests is the cheapest pay-as-you-go entry for plain HTML. Octoparse retains the lowest per-page cost at flat-rate scale, but requires a GUI workflow — not programmable via API. For programmatic scraping at JavaScript-rendered sites, ScrapingBee Startup gives the best $/page on this list. Apify's pricing becomes highly competitive above 50,000 pages/month when you factor in the included infrastructure (scheduling, storage, retries, monitoring).
Total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis
TCO includes platform fees plus the ongoing cost of engineering time to build, maintain, and operate scrapers. Here is a realistic 12-month TCO for a team scraping 500,000 pages per month:
TCO comparison: 500,000 pages/month, 12 months
| Approach | Platform fees (annual) | Dev time (annual) | Total TCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apify Business ($999/mo) | $11,988 | ~120 hours ($9,000) | ~$20,988 |
| Apify Scale ($199/mo) + overages | ~$3,500 | ~120 hours ($9,000) | ~$12,500 |
| Bright Data Pro commit ($999/mo) | $11,988 | ~200 hours ($15,000) | ~$26,988 |
| Octoparse Professional ($249/mo annual) | $2,988 | ~60 hours ($4,500) | ~$7,488 |
| Firecrawl Growth ($333/mo) | $3,996 | ~80 hours ($6,000) | ~$9,996 |
| ScraperAPI Business ($299/mo) | $3,588 | ~160 hours ($12,000) | ~$15,588 |
| Zyte API ($500/mo commit) | $6,000 | ~140 hours ($10,500) | ~$16,500 |
| Self-hosted | ~$6,000 | ~480 hours ($36,000) | ~$42,000 |
Developer time assumptions: $75/hour blended rate. Apify and Firecrawl reduce maintenance time because they handle anti-bot updates, proxy rotation, and infrastructure. Octoparse reduces dev time further because scraper creation requires no code. Self-hosted dramatically increases dev time due to infrastructure ownership.
Important caveat: These figures are estimates. Your actual cost depends on the complexity of target sites, frequency of schema changes, team skill level, and the specific pages being scraped (JavaScript-heavy sites cost more in every platform).
Budget recommendations by use case
Student / hobby ($0–$50/month)
Recommended: Apify Free tier → Firecrawl Free
- Apify's free tier provides $5 in monthly credits — enough for ~5,000 simple page scrapes.
- Firecrawl's free tier allows 1,000 credits/month of clean markdown extraction without any code.
- For learning purposes, Apify's Starter plan at $29/month is the best value: $29 of credits at $0.16/CU, access to pre-built Actors, cloud scheduling, and storage.
- Students qualify for 50% off Apify paid plans with a
.eduemail address.
Avoid at this budget: Bright Data (no meaningful free tier — only trial credits), Octoparse Standard ($69/mo annual minimum), Zyte pay-as-you-go (works without a base fee but adds up fast on JS-rendered pages).
Startup ($50–$300/month)
Recommended: Apify Scale ($199/mo) or ScraperAPI Startup ($149/mo)
- Apify Scale is the best all-in-one option: you get $199 in credits at $0.16/CU, residential proxy access, a scheduler, dataset storage, and a library of pre-built scrapers. No infrastructure to manage.
- If you need only a proxy layer (you already have scraping code), ScraperAPI Startup provides 1M credits/month — enough for ~100,000 JavaScript-rendered pages.
- Apify also offers startup discounts for qualifying companies.
- Firecrawl Standard ($83/mo) is the right choice if your primary use case is feeding content into LLMs or building AI-powered applications.
Key decision point: Do you need to write custom scraping code, or do you need pre-built scrapers? If custom code, ScraperAPI. If pre-built scrapers with scheduling and storage, Apify.
SMB / data team ($300–$1,500/month)
Recommended: Apify Scale ($199/mo) with overages, or Octoparse Professional ($249/mo annual) — Apify Business ($999/mo) only above 500K JS-rendered pages
- At this budget, Apify Scale plus overages can flex up to $700–$900/month while still costing less than Business — useful when monthly volume varies. Once you consistently exceed $999/mo in compute, the Business plan's $0.13/CU rate (versus Scale's $0.16/CU) and Gold discount tier pay for themselves.
- Octoparse Professional at $249/mo annual is the right choice for non-technical teams running repeatable scraping jobs. The visual builder eliminates developer dependency for maintenance.
- For proxy-heavy workloads (e.g., geo-targeted data, social media, Amazon), Bright Data committed plans at $499/mo Starter (141 GB residential at $3.50/GB) become cost-competitive vs. pay-as-you-go.
- Consider blending platforms: Apify for orchestration and scheduled extraction, Bright Data for the proxy layer when you need residential IPs at scale.
Avoid: Self-hosted at this budget — the TCO is significantly higher once you include engineering time.
Enterprise ($1,500+/month)
Recommended: Apify Enterprise + Bright Data dedicated infrastructure
- Enterprise-scale scraping typically requires custom SLAs, dedicated infrastructure, and compliance documentation. Both Apify and Bright Data offer dedicated account management at this tier.
- Apify Enterprise provides custom credit pools, dedicated proxies, SSO/SAML, and team management features.
- Bright Data Enterprise includes dedicated proxy pools, unlimited bandwidth commitments, and enterprise data delivery pipelines.
- Zyte is worth evaluating at this scale for teams already using Python/Scrapy stacks — Scrapy Cloud provides managed execution with strong observability.
- For teams building AI data pipelines at scale, see how web scraping integrates with RAG architectures.
Self-hosted makes sense here only if you have dedicated infrastructure engineering capacity and specific compliance requirements (e.g., data residency regulations that prohibit using US-based SaaS platforms).
How to calculate your scraping budget
Use this five-step framework to estimate your monthly scraping cost before committing to a platform:
-
Estimate monthly page volume: How many unique pages will you scrape per month? Multiply by your target refresh frequency. (e.g., 10,000 product pages × 30 refreshes/month = 300,000 scrape operations)
-
Classify page types: What percentage require JavaScript rendering? Headless browser execution costs 5–10× more than basic HTTP on most platforms. A site with dynamic prices loading via JavaScript counts as a rendered page.
-
Factor in proxy requirements: Does your target site block datacenter IPs? Residential proxy traffic costs $3–$20/GB depending on provider. Each rendered page typically consumes 100–500 KB of bandwidth.
-
Add developer time: Estimate hours/month for building new scrapers, maintaining existing ones against site changes, and handling failures. Multiply by your team's hourly cost.
-
Compare total monthly cost: Add platform fees + proxy costs + developer time. Then compare against alternatives using this guide's TCO table.
Quick formula:
Monthly cost = Platform fee + (Pages × Cost/page) + (Dev hours × Hourly rate)
For Apify, you can also use the Apify cost optimization guide to reduce credit consumption by 30–60% through efficient Actor configuration.
FAQ: Web scraping pricing
How much does web scraping cost?
Web scraping costs range from $0/month (free tier tools) to several thousand dollars/month at enterprise scale. For most small-to-medium use cases (under 100,000 pages/month), budget $50–$200/month for a managed platform. Add developer time at $50–$100/hour for custom scraper maintenance. Total cost of ownership for a self-hosted stack often exceeds $3,000–$5,000/month when engineering time is included.
Which scraping tool is cheapest?
It depends on volume and use case:
- Lowest entry cost: Apify free ($5 credits/mo) or Firecrawl free (1,000 credits/mo)
- Cheapest per page at scale: Octoparse Standard ($69/mo annual, flat for hundreds of thousands of pages)
- Cheapest pay-as-you-go API: Zyte API at $0.13/1K simple HTTP requests
- Cheapest fixed API plan: ScraperAPI Hobby ($49/mo for 100K credits) for simple HTML pages
- Cheapest AI-ready output: Firecrawl Hobby ($16/mo for 5,000 credits)
- Self-hosted is cheapest on infrastructure costs but most expensive on TCO when developer time is included
How do I calculate scraping costs?
Estimate monthly page volume → classify by page type (HTML vs JavaScript) → determine proxy needs → calculate platform fees using their credit/billing model → add developer time at your team's rate. Most platforms have cost calculators or pricing pages with credit breakdowns. For Apify specifically, the credits page in your console shows real-time consumption per Actor run.
What is the best scraping tool for my budget?
- Under $50/month: Apify Free, Firecrawl Free/Hobby ($16), Zyte API pay-as-you-go, ScraperAPI Hobby ($49)
- $50–$200/month: Apify Starter ($29) or Scale ($199), ScraperAPI Startup ($149), ScrapingBee Startup ($99), Firecrawl Standard ($83), Octoparse Standard ($69 annual)
- $200–$500/month: ScraperAPI Business ($299), ScrapingBee Business ($249), Octoparse Professional ($249 annual), Bright Data Starter ($499)
- $500+/month: Apify Business ($999), Bright Data Professional ($999) or Enterprise ($1,999), ScrapingBee Business+ ($599), Firecrawl Scale ($599)
Does Apify charge for failed scraping attempts?
Apify charges for compute time, not successful results. If an Actor run fails after consuming resources, those credits are still billed. However, Apify's retry mechanism and error handling are well-documented — the Apify cost optimization guide covers how to minimize wasted credits with proper error handling and early termination.
Is self-hosted scraping cheaper than managed platforms?
On infrastructure alone, yes. A $40/month VPS can run many scrapers. However, when you include residential proxy costs ($3–$15/GB) and developer time for maintenance (20–40 hours/month), self-hosted typically costs $2,000–$5,000/month more than a managed platform at equivalent scale. Self-hosted is only cost-effective for teams with dedicated infrastructure engineers and scraping volumes above 50M pages/month.
Bottom line: which platform is right for you?
Choose Apify if you want a full-stack scraping platform with pre-built Actors, scheduling, storage, and proxy management in one subscription. Best value between $29–$199/month for most technical teams; Business at $999/mo for higher-volume orchestration.
Choose Bright Data if you need the highest-quality residential proxy network for sites with aggressive anti-bot protection. Cost-effective at the $499/mo Starter commit and above. Pair with Apify or a custom stack for orchestration.
Choose Octoparse if your team is non-technical and needs a point-and-click scraper with cloud scheduling. Fixed-rate pricing ($69/mo Standard annual) makes it extremely cost-efficient for high-volume steady-state scraping without developer involvement.
Choose Firecrawl if your primary use case is feeding web content into LLMs, building RAG pipelines, or extracting clean markdown from arbitrary URLs. Best-in-class for AI data workflows at $16–$83/month.
Choose ScraperAPI or ScrapingBee if you already have scraping code and need only a proxy-rotation API layer. Simple integration, no infrastructure overhead, competitive pricing for basic HTML extraction.
Choose Zyte if your team already runs Python/Scrapy pipelines and wants managed cloud execution. Scrapy Cloud is the most natural hosting option for the Scrapy ecosystem.
Self-host only if your organization has dedicated infrastructure engineers, strict data residency requirements, or scraping volume that exceeds $5,000/month in managed platform costs.
Pricing data in this guide was verified against official pricing pages on May 18, 2026. All platforms update pricing periodically — verify current rates on official pricing pages before committing to a plan.