Scraping APIs, and what a credit actually costs

A scraping API sells you the finished page rather than the address you fetch it from. That changes what you are buying and it changes the unit on the bill: 7 of the 9 we track charge in credits, and a credit is not a fixed amount of work. On one plan, a page that needs a browser costs more than a plain fetch.

So the per-gigabyte figure this site compares proxies on does not reach this product, and we do not invent one. What follows is what each vendor states, in its own unit, with the date we read it.

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Scraping API comparisons · Scraping API alternatives

Every scraping API we track

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Billing unitJavaScript renderingRequest billingMaximum entry price ($/month)Minimum entry-tier concurrency

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Prices name the cheapest paid monthly tier and its allowance. Credits are not pages. Missing facts sort last. Each price has its own source and read date; provider facts keep their separate check date.

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Scraping API providers, monthly entry plans and buying conditions
Provider	Entry plan	Included usage	Buying conditions	Visit
Crawlbase	$99/moStarter · Billed monthlyPrice read 2026-09-08	200,000 credits/month 20 concurrent requests per token (default) JavaScript: yes, stated 20 concurrent requests per token by default, shared across subscribed Crawlbase products. Higher limits require contacting support and are not priced here. This is not an account-wide ceiling or measured requests per second. Concurrency read 2026-09-08 · Source Quoted concurrency conditions Concurrent requests / 20 / per tokenContext: Default limits. Limit / Default / Scope. Every account starts with the same generous defaults. You don't need to ask for these - they're already on every token the moment you sign up. Read 2026-09-08 Endpoint specs and parameter references for every Crawlbase API. One token authenticates all of them; pricing and concurrency budgets are shared across the products you subscribe to. Read 2026-09-08 Higher concurrency contact usContext: Email support with your target throughput and use case. Read 2026-09-08	Billing requires cb_status 200 and a listed target status, including 404 and 410. A 302 must return content after the redirect. Custom success-code overrides are outside this estimate. Plan conditions and sources Purchase conditions · Starter The subscription credit block resets each monthly cycle. The FAQ's separate no-expiry statement concerns PAYG billed in arrears, not a subscription rollover allowance. Read 2026-09-08 · Source Quoted policy Pay as you go bills in arrears for what you actually used, so there is nothing to expire. A subscription's credit block resets with each monthly cycle.Context: Pricing questions. / Do credits expire, and does the allowance reset? Beyond the subscription block, PAYG follows the same rate card at the volume bracket already reached. Turning PAYG off pauses requests at the block. This clause does not establish a flat extra-credit price. Read 2026-09-08 · Source Quoted policy Usage continues as pay as you go on the same rate card, at the bracket your volume already reached. Prefer a hard stop? Turn pay as you go off and requests pause at the block instead.Context: Pricing questions. / What happens past a subscription's included credits? An optional hard spend cap pauses usage before the bill passes it. The cap can be raised, lowered or removed; the FAQ specifies no numeric cap. Read 2026-09-08 · Source Quoted policy Yes. Set an optional hard spend cap in the dashboard and usage stops before the bill passes it. Raise, lower or remove it any time.Context: Pricing questions. / Can I cap what I spend? Billable requests Crawlbase only charges requests where cb_status is 200 and original_status is one of: Code Meaning 200 OK 201 Created 204 No Content 301 Moved Permanently 302 Found - only when the redirect was followed and returned content 404 Not Found 410 Gone Any other original_status is free, and so is any non- 200 cb_status. Use this list when reconciling a usage invoice against your application logs. Billing policy read 2026-09-09 Bills in credit. Provider record checked 2026-08-20.	Visit Crawlbase
Firecrawl	$19/moHobby · Billed monthlyPrice read 2026-09-08	5,000 credits/month 5 concurrent requests JavaScript: not established	Returned documents are billable even for target errors such as 403 and 404. Some scans, guards, cache modes and other endpoints can also charge without a document. Plan conditions and sources Purchase conditions · Hobby Hobby plan credits do not roll over. Read 2026-09-08 · Source Quoted policy Credits roll over on Scale and Enterprise. Scale carries unused credits for one month, and Enterprise carries a custom amount. Hobby, Standard and Growth credits do not roll over.Context: Billing FAQ / Do credits roll over to the next month? The billing guide says plan credits reset each month by default; its rollover exceptions apply to annual Scale and Enterprise plans. Read 2026-09-09 · Source Quoted policy Plan credits do not roll over by default: your monthly allotment resets each month. Annual Scale plans roll unused plan credits over 1 month, and annual Enterprise plans roll them over 2 months.Context: FAQs / Do unused credits roll over to the next month? Purchased credits survive renewal and remain until used while the subscription continues. If cancelled, they expire at the end of the current billing period. Read 2026-09-09 · Source Quoted policy Credits you buy stay on your account until you use them. They expire if you cancel your subscription, so use them before you leave. The expiry lands at the end of your current billing period, and a renewal does not touch them.Context: FAQs / Do pay-as-you-go credits expire? What decides the charge is whether Firecrawl returned a document, not whether the target site returned a successful HTTP status code. Firecrawl returned a document: 1 credit per page, plus any of the option costs above. This includes pages that come back with an error status such as 403 Forbidden or 404 Not Found. The target responded, Firecrawl captured that response, and you get it back as a document. Check the metadata.statusCode field in the response to spot these cases and stop retrying URLs that are consistently blocked. Firecrawl returned no document: 0 credits. A scrape that fails outright, for example because the site never responded or every rendering attempt failed, is not charged. A few cases still charge when no document comes back. They cover work that Firecrawl already performed on your behalf before the scrape ended. Case What is charged Threat protection scan 2 credits per scanned URL, including a scrape that the scan itself blocked Prompt injection check 5 credits, once the checkPromptInjection guard has run FIRE-1 agent Usage-based, for the navigation the agent already did lockdown cache miss 1 credit Monitor check A page that errors during a check is charged the base 1 credit per page Interact and Browser sessions Charged per browser minute of session time, with a one-minute minimum, whether or not the session got what you wanted Billing policy read 2026-09-09 Bills in credit. Provider record checked 2026-08-20.	Visit Firecrawl
ScraperAPI	$49/moHobby · Billed monthlyPrice read 2026-09-08	100,000 API credits/month 20 concurrent requests JavaScript: yes, stated	HTTP 200/404 and requests cancelled before 70 seconds are billable. Plan conditions and sources Purchase conditions · Hobby Unused credits do not roll over; the balance resets at subscription renewal. Read 2026-09-08 · Source Quoted policy No, your ScraperAPI credit balance resets when your subscription renews. If your usage has changed, you can move up or down a plan anytime from the billing page.Context: ScraperAPI Pricing FAQs / Do my unused ScraperAPI credits roll over to the next billing cycle? At 100% credit usage before renewal, the FAQ offers an upgrade or a custom support arrangement for this plan. No extra-credit price is collected. Read 2026-09-08 · Source Quoted policy If you reach 100% of your ScraperAPI credits on a Hobby, Startup, or Business plan before your standard renewal date, you’ll be able to: 1) seamlessly upgrade to the next plan, which often provides a better price-per-credit, or 2) contact our support team to discuss a custom plan tailored to your specific needs. Customers on a Scraper API Scaling, Professional, Advanced, or Enterprise plan can continue using our services on a PAYG model, using extra credits at a fixed, predictable rate; of course, you can always reach out to our sales team to adjust your plan to your increasing needs.Context: ScraperAPI Pricing FAQs / What happens if I run out of ScraperAPI credits? Requests above the plan's concurrent-thread limit receive HTTP 429 without an extra charge; they are rejected rather than queued. Read 2026-09-08 · Source Quoted policy If you exceed your ScraperAPI limits, you’ll get a 429 response asking you to bring your concurrency back within your plan’s limit and try again. There’s no extra charge for going over, the request is simply turned away rather than queued.Context: ScraperAPI Pricing FAQs / What happens if I exceed my ScraperAPI "Concurrent Threads" limit? We only charge for successful requests ( 200 and 404 status codes) and for requests that have been cancelled from your side before giving us enough time to finish them (70 seconds). Billing policy read 2026-09-08 Bills in credit. Provider record checked 2026-08-20.	Visit ScraperAPI
Scrapfly	$30/moDiscovery · Billed monthlyPrice read 2026-09-08	200,000 API credits/month 5 concurrent requests JavaScript: yes, stated	Failed-request protection has excluded statuses and a fairness-policy billing exception. Plan conditions and sources Purchase conditions · Discovery Unused monthly credits do not roll over; quotas reset at renewal. Downgrades and cancellation take effect at the end of the current billing period. Read 2026-09-08 · Source Quoted policy No. Quotas reset at renewal. If you consistently end the month with leftovers, downgrade to a smaller plan and use pay-as-you-go for the occasional overflow. You end up paying less.Context: Can I change or cancel my subscription? Yes. Upgrade, downgrade, or cancel any time from the dashboard. Downgrade and cancel take effect at the end of the current billing period, so you get every credit you paid for. Discovery stops at its monthly quota and has no pay-as-you-go overflow. More usage requires an upgrade. Read 2026-09-08 · Source Quoted policy From Pro and up, you switch to pay-as-you-go at the per-10k-credit rate on your plan, your integration never stalls. Discovery caps on quota for a predictable bill; upgrade to Pro from the dashboard if you need overflow. If pay-as-you-go consistently makes the next plan up cheaper, upgrade in one click.Context: What happens when I hit my monthly quota? Scrape Failed Protection & Fairness Policy Scrapfly's Scrape Failed Protection ensures that failed scrapes are not billed to our customers. To prevent abuse, we also have a fairness policy in place. Fairness Policy Trigger: If more than 30% of failed traffic with eligible status codes (≥400 and not excluded) is detected within a minimum one-hour period, the fairness policy will be disabled and usage will be billed. Eligible Status Codes Status codes greater than or equal to 400 and not excluded (see below) are eligible for Scrape Failed Protection. Excluded status codes: 400, 401, 402, 404, 405, 406, 407, 409, 410, 411, 412, 413, 414, 415, 416, 417, 418, 422, 424, 426, 428, 456 Account Suspension: If an account deliberately scrapes a protected website without success and without using our Anti Scraping Protection (ASP), the account may be suspended at the discretion of our account managers. Billing policy read 2026-09-08 Bills in credit. Provider record checked 2026-08-20.	Visit Scrapfly
ScrapingBee	$19/moHobby · Billed monthlyPrice read 2026-09-08	75,000 API credits/month 25 concurrent requests JavaScript: yes, stated	HTTP 404, 410 and 413 are billable. Transparent status mode also bills target responses below 500. Plan conditions and sources Purchase conditions · Hobby Unused credits expire at subscription expiry or renewal. Upgrades and downgrades transfer unused credits to the replacement subscription. Read 2026-09-09 · Source Quoted policy When your subscription expires or is renewed, any unused credits will not roll over.Context: Upgrading or downgrading the subscription would transfer any unused credits to the new subscription. When credits run out, the guide offers manual renewal or one-time add-ons. Add-ons retain the billing cycle; their prices and sizes are not established here. Read 2026-09-09 · Source Quoted policy If you happen to deplete all of your credits, you don't need to wait for the next renewal date as you can either purchase one-time add-ons or you can manually renew your subscription.Context: If you don't want to change your billing cycle, you can purchase one-time add-ons. On the same page, just scroll down and you will be able to see our one-time add-on plans: Manual renewal immediately renews the subscription and forfeits leftover credits. The guide's dialog amount is a historical example, not this plan's price. Read 2026-09-09 · Source Quoted policy You will be charged $599.99 and you subscription will be renewed immediately, any left-over credits will be lost, are you sure?Context: Manually Renew Your Subscription / You will get a popup with the following message: Optional early renewal requires enabling and saving a 98% usage strategy for this account or this account and all teammates. The remaining 2% carries to the next cycle; no carry-in balance or extra renewal is assumed in the estimate. Read 2026-09-09 · Source Quoted policy Remaining 2% of credits will be carried-over onto the next billing cycle.Context: From there, click on the Auto renew button to reach the Automatic early renewal page. On that page, check the checkbox next to Early renew my subscription when running out of credits text. And select one of the following Early renew strategy: Renew when only this account reach 98% usage Renew when this account and all my teammates accounts reach 98% usage After that, click on Update my preferences button to enable the Auto-renew feature. One-time credit purchases supplement an existing subscription and expire when it renews or expires. Read 2026-09-09 · Source Quoted policy We do offer one-time credit purchases, but they only add credits to your existing subscription and will expire when your subscription renews or expires.Context: Do you have usage based pricing or one-time prepay credits? After cancellation, remaining API credits stay usable until the current subscription term ends. Read 2026-09-09 · Source Quoted policy Your remaining API credits will be usable until the end of your current subscription term.Context: How to cancel my subscription? Response Status Code ScrapingBee returns the following HTTP status codes. These are ScrapingBee's own status codes, not the target page's. By default we do not forward the status the scraped site returned - see transparent HTTP status code for how the two relate, and for how to get the target's status instead. Code Billed? Meaning Solution 200 Yes Successful Call 400 No Bad request Incorrect parameters or parameters type. See the message in the response body. 401 No Out of credits, or an invalid API key Check the key, then upgrade your plan or contact sales. 403 No The account is banned, or the request was redirected to a blocked destination The response body says which. This is never the scraped page's own 403. 404 Yes Requested URL not found Provide a valid URL. 410 Yes Requested URL gone Provide a valid URL. 413 Yes The target page returned 413 (payload too large) Check the URL; the page itself refused the request. 429 No Too many concurrent requests. Please upgrade your plan or contact sales. 500 No We could not scrape the page, or the target returned a status we do not pass through Retry; the response body carries the reason. Transparent HTTP status code transparent_status_code [ boolean ] ( false ) By default ScrapingBee reports its own status rather than the target's: any 2xx becomes 200, 404, 410 and 413 are passed through, and everything else becomes 500. Redirects are followed first, so this is the status at the end of the chain. So a 403 from an anti-bot page, a 401 from a paywall or a 503 from an overloaded site all reach you as a 500, not as their own code. A 500 from us is not billed. To get the same body and status code as the requested URL in any circumstances, use the transparent_status_code=true parameter. When this parameter is set to true: Anything the target returns below 500 is billed, since we no longer replace it with a 500. A 5xx is still free. We do not retry. Without the parameter a failed scrape is tried again on another proxy; with it you get the first attempt. Billing policy read 2026-09-08 Bills in credit. Provider record checked 2026-08-20.	Visit ScrapingBee
SearchApi	$40/moDeveloper Plan (standard speed) · Billed monthlyPrice read 2026-10-06	10,000 searches/month Concurrency not established JavaScript: not established	States only successful requests are billed Plan conditions and sources Plan purchase conditions not collected. Bills in request. Provider record checked 2026-10-06.	Visit SearchApi
SerpapiNot yet reviewed	No entry subscription price on record	Allowance not established Concurrency not established JavaScript: not established	Billing policy not established Plan conditions and sources Bills in credit. Provider record checked 2026-08-20.	Visit Serpapi
ZenRows	$19/moBuild · Billed monthlyPrice read 2026-09-08	45,000 credits/month 20 concurrent requests JavaScript: yes, stated	HTTP 404 and 410 responses count as billable successes. Plan conditions and sources Purchase conditions · Build Build states one month of rollover. No existing account balance is assumed in the workload estimate. Read 2026-09-08 · Source Quoted policy Top-ups plus 1 month rolloverContext: Build / Rollover This paid plan allows extra-credit purchases up to four times per billing period; unused top-up credits roll into the next period. Pack sizes and prices are not stated in this FAQ, so additional usage remains unpriced. Read 2026-09-08 · Source Quoted policy You're warned before you reach it. On a paid plan you can add extra credits (top-ups) any time to keep running, up to four times per billing period, and unused top-up credits roll into the next period. On Free there are no top-ups: you wait for the next monthly refresh or upgrade to a paid plan. Either way, no lost data or configuration.Context: Billing FAQ / What happens if I hit my monthly limit? Failed requests are never charged. Not Found (404) and Gone (410) responses count as successful results. Billing policy read 2026-09-08 Bills in credit. Provider record checked 2026-08-20.	Visit ZenRows
ZyteNot yet reviewed	No entry subscription price on record	Allowance not established Concurrency not established JavaScript: not established	Billing policy not established Plan conditions and sources Bills in request. Provider record checked 2026-09-03.	Visit Zyte

Side by side

What one unit of work costs

These are quoted credit costs for specific request configurations. Match the configuration to your workload, then use a plan’s allowance and price to work out the monthly purchase.

Crawlbase

1 creditStandard requestRead 2026-09-08
2 creditsJavaScript rendering on a standard siteRead 2026-09-08

Firecrawl

1 creditScrapeRead 2026-09-08

ScraperAPI

1 creditNormal (flat) requestRead 2026-09-08
5 creditsAmazon base requestRead 2026-09-08
5 creditsWalmart base requestRead 2026-09-08
5 creditseBay base requestRead 2026-09-08
25 creditsGoogle base requestRead 2026-09-08
25 creditsBing base requestRead 2026-09-08
30 creditsLinkedIn base requestRead 2026-09-08
10 creditsJavaScript renderingRead 2026-09-09
10 creditsPremium residential/mobile proxyRead 2026-09-09
25 creditsJavaScript rendering + premium proxyRead 2026-09-09

Scrapfly

1 creditDatacenter TEXT scrapeRead 2026-09-08
6 creditsDatacenter TEXT scrape with JavaScriptRead 2026-09-08
25 creditsResidential TEXT scrapeRead 2026-09-08
30 creditsResidential TEXT scrape with JavaScriptRead 2026-09-08

ScrapingBee

1 creditClassic Proxy without JavaScript renderingRead 2026-09-08
5 creditsClassic Proxy with JavaScript rendering (default)Read 2026-09-08
10 creditsPremium Proxy without JavaScript renderingRead 2026-09-08
25 creditsPremium Proxy with JavaScript renderingRead 2026-09-08
15 creditsGoogle HTML API: Classic Proxy without JavaScript renderingRead 2026-09-09
15 creditsGoogle HTML API: Classic Proxy with JavaScript rendering (default)Read 2026-09-09
15 creditsGoogle HTML API: Premium Proxy without JavaScript renderingRead 2026-09-09
15 creditsGoogle HTML API: Premium Proxy with JavaScript renderingRead 2026-09-09

ZenRows

1 creditStandard requestRead 2026-09-08
5 creditsJavaScript renderingRead 2026-09-08
10 creditsPremium proxyRead 2026-09-08
25 creditsJavaScript rendering + premium proxyRead 2026-09-08

A JavaScript request and a request using premium proxies can have separate credit costs, and their combination can have a third rate. The workload calculator uses these quoted rates and each provider’s request conditions.

Who charges for failures

Billing policies can exclude certain error codes from failed-request protection or charge for early cancellations. Check which responses and cancelled requests count as billable before estimating a workload.

Crawlbase — Billing requires cb_status 200 and a listed target status, including 404 and 410. A 302 must return content after the redirect. Custom success-code overrides are outside this estimate.Policy read 2026-09-09
Firecrawl — Returned documents are billable even for target errors such as 403 and 404. Some scans, guards, cache modes and other endpoints can also charge without a document.Policy read 2026-09-09
ScraperAPI — HTTP 200/404 and requests cancelled before 70 seconds are billable.Policy read 2026-09-08
Scrapfly — Failed-request protection has excluded statuses and a fairness-policy billing exception.Policy read 2026-09-08
ScrapingBee — HTTP 404, 410 and 413 are billable. Transparent status mode also bills target responses below 500.Policy read 2026-09-08
SearchApi — States only successful requests are billed
ZenRows — HTTP 404 and 410 responses count as billable successes.Policy read 2026-09-08

Not stated is not the same as charges for failures. It means you cannot tell from the page you are buying on, and the number you are comparing is missing a term. Ask before you buy, and keep the reply. The same question applies to challenges these APIs clear on your behalf: a scraping API folds that cost into its per-request price, while a captcha solving service prices it separately and per challenge type.

Whose network is underneath

A scraping API is a storefront over somebody’s proxy pool. Of the 7 we publish, none states whose.

We are recording the gap rather than waiting for it to close, because the question is not academic. NetNut’s network was resold and white-labelled, and when the FBI seized it, every storefront in front of it inherited the problem. A clean-looking API may resell a pool that has since been seized as a botnet, and where the addresses come from does not stop at the vendor boundary.

Is a scraping API cheaper than proxies?

It depends on page weight, and the crossover is sharper than most people expect: a per-request price wins on heavy pages and loses on light ones, because a proxy bill is a function of bytes and an API bill is a function of pages. We worked the break-even out, and what your pages actually weigh is the input that decides it.

Questions

How do scraping APIs charge?

7 of the 9 scraping APIs we track bill in credits rather than by the gigabyte. A credit is not a fixed amount of work: on the same plan a page that needs a browser costs more than a plain fetch, so a per-gigabyte comparison does not reach this product.

Do scraping APIs charge for failed requests?

Whose proxy network does a scraping API use?

Of the 7 scraping APIs we publish, none states whose network is underneath. It matters because a storefront can resell a pool that is later seized, as happened to every reseller of NetNut's network.

Prices on this page were read from each provider’s own site. The oldest was checked 4 weeks ago. How we check

What 1,000 pages costs on each · anti-detect browser plans · choose API and separate stack purchases · what a captcha solve costs · The four proxy types · what a credit buys · success-only billing · JavaScript rendering · every provider · how we check