ScraperAPI Alternative with Flat Pricing for Google, LinkedIn and Rendered Pages
ScraperAPI bills 1 credit for a plain page, 11 for a rendered one, 25 for Google and 30 for LinkedIn. WebScrap bills one request for any successful page, rendered or not, through rotating residential proxies, from 0.33 USD per 1,000.
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This console sends a real request and shows you the real response. Five live fetches per session, and the sample targets run as often as you like.
Why teams look for a ScraperAPI alternative
Short answer: the plan size is counted in credits, and the expensive targets eat them twenty five or thirty at a time. 100,000 credits on the 49 USD Hobby plan is 100,000 static pages but only 4,000 Google searches. A flat per page API turns those same 49 USD into 50,000 pages of any kind.
ScraperAPI is a solid, well documented proxy API. You send a URL, it rotates the address, retries, renders when you ask and sends back HTML, and its parsed endpoints for Amazon and Google return JSON. Teams start on it because the first week is easy. The ones who move usually find that the invoice depends less on how many pages they scrape and more on which domains are in the list, because rendering adds 10 credits, premium proxies add 10, an anti-bot bypass adds 10, and Google, Bing and LinkedIn carry fixed rates of 25 and 30.
WebScrap meters one thing: successful pages. Rendering, residential addresses, retries through blocks and JSON extraction are part of the request. A rank tracker, a lead enrichment job and a price monitor on the same plan cost the same per page, so the bill is a number you can forecast before the month starts.
What 49 USD buys on each API
Both entry plans cost exactly 49 USD a month. The chart shows how many pages of each type that money returns. ScraperAPI's credit rates come from its pricing page and credit documentation, read on October 15, 2026.
The first row is ScraperAPI's best case and it wins it outright. Every row below it is a target where its domain rate or a feature surcharge applies. Plan by plan detail sits in our ScraperAPI pricing and cost per 1,000 pages breakdown.
Pages per month for 49 USD
ScraperAPI HobbyWebScrap Starter
Plain HTML page
Amazon product page, 5 credits
JavaScript rendered page, 11 credits
Rendered page behind Cloudflare, 21 credits
Google results page, 25 credits
LinkedIn page, 30 credits
ScraperAPI vs WebScrap compared line by line
Where ScraperAPI is the better buy, the table says so. Monthly billing in USD unless noted.
| Question | ScraperAPI | WebScrap |
|---|---|---|
| How it bills | Credits per request: 1 base, plus 10 for rendering, 10 for premium proxies, 10 for an anti-bot bypass; fixed domain rates of 5, 25 and 30 | One request per successful page, rendering and extraction included |
| Monthly plans | Hobby 49, Startup 149, Business 299, Scaling 475, Professional 975, Advanced 1,975; yearly 10 percent off | Starter 49, Growth 149, Scale 499, Enterprise 998; yearly is half |
| Included per month | 100,000 to 21,500,000 credits | 50,000 to 3,000,000 successful pages |
| Google results, per 1,000 | 12.25 USD on Hobby, 2.49 on Business | 0.98 on Starter, 0.33 on Scale |
| Plain static page, per 1,000 | 0.49 on Hobby, about 0.10 on Business | 0.98 on Starter, 0.33 on Scale; ScraperAPI is cheaper at volume |
| What a failed page costs | Nothing after the 70 second retry window; a 404 is billed | Nothing; only 2xx responses are billed |
| Concurrency | 20, 50, 100, 200, 300 or 500 threads | 5, 50, 200 or 400; ScraperAPI gives more at the entry price |
| Geotargeting | US and EU on Hobby and Startup, global from Business | 20 countries on Starter, 90 with US city level from Growth |
| Structured output | Parsed endpoints for Amazon, Google, Walmart and a few more | Your own CSS or XPath schema on any site, plain English fields from Growth |
| Scheduling | DataPipeline scheduler and async jobs | Scheduled jobs with webhook delivery from Growth |
| Trial | 7 days with 5,000 credits, no card | Live request console on the homepage, no account needed |
| Best for | Huge volumes of plain pages, Amazon on parsed JSON, high concurrency on a small plan | Google, LinkedIn, rendered and protected pages on a bill you can forecast |
What real workloads cost each month on both
Five common jobs, each on the cheapest plan that covers it, monthly billing, no overage. The last card is ScraperAPI's win and it stays on the page.
20,000 Google searches
ScraperAPI, 500,000 credits
149 USD, Startup
WebScrap
49 USD, Starter
About 650 keywords checked daily.
10,000 LinkedIn pages
ScraperAPI, 300,000 credits
149 USD, Startup
WebScrap
49 USD, Starter
Public company and job pages only.
100,000 rendered pages
ScraperAPI, 1,100,000 credits
299 USD, Business
WebScrap
149 USD, Growth
Startup's 1,000,000 credits fall just short.
200,000 Cloudflare pages
ScraperAPI, 4,200,000 credits rendered
475 USD, Scaling
WebScrap
149 USD, Growth
Without rendering, 2,200,000 credits on Business.
1,000,000 static pages
ScraperAPI, 1,000,000 credits
149 USD, Startup
WebScrap
499 USD, Scale
ScraperAPI is cheaper for plain HTML.
How to move a ScraperAPI job in four steps
-
01
Read the credit header
ScraperAPI returns the cost of each call in the sa-credit-cost header. Log it for a day and group by domain. The jobs averaging more than 5 credits a page are the ones to move first.
-
02
Map the parameters
render=true becomes render set to browser, country_code becomes country, and premium or ultra_premium simply disappears, because the proxy pool is chosen for you on every request.
-
03
Replace parsing with a schema
If you parsed HTML yourself, send a schema of CSS selectors and get typed JSON back. For Google results, the SERP API returns organic rows, ads and features already parsed.
-
04
Run both for a week
Send the same URLs to both, compare success rates, rows and the two invoices side by side, then switch the ScraperAPI job off. Keep cheap static jobs where they are if the numbers say so.
# before, 21 credits a page
GET api.scraperapi.com/
?api_key=KEY
&url=https://shop.example.com/p/42
&render=true&premium=true
&country_code=us
# after, 1 request a page
POST /v1/scrape
{ "url": "https://shop.example.com/p/42",
"render": "browser",
"country": "us",
"schema": { "price": ".price" } }
Every parameter is in the web scraping API docs, with Python and curl examples.
When ScraperAPI is still the right buy
Moving the wrong job costs more than it saves. These are the cases where we tell people to stay.
Plain HTML
Millions of static pages
At 1 credit a page, Startup reads 1,000,000 static pages for 149 USD and Business reads 3,000,000 for 299. Our flat rate cannot match that on pages that need no rendering and no residential address.
Amazon
Parsed product JSON
The fixed 5 credit Amazon rate and the parsed Amazon endpoint come to about 0.50 USD per 1,000 on Business. Below a million pages a month that beats our Growth rate. Above it, our Amazon scraper API on Scale is cheaper.
Concurrency
Many threads on a small plan
Hobby allows 20 concurrent threads where our Starter allows 5. If a small budget has to finish a burst of requests fast, ScraperAPI's entry plan moves more at once.
Other ScraperAPI alternatives and who each one suits
The honest shortlist for teams leaving ScraperAPI. Linked names open our conversion of that vendor's plans into dollars per 1,000 pages.
| Tool | How it bills | Entry price | Pick it when |
|---|---|---|---|
| ScrapingBee | Credits: 5 per rendered page, 25 on premium proxies, 75 on stealth, 15 per Google URL | 19 USD for 75,000 credits | Ordinary rendered sites and Google, few hard anti-bot targets |
| ZenRows | Credits: 5 for rendering, 10 for premium proxies, 25 for both | 19 USD for 45,000 credits | Mostly unprotected pages with occasional rendering |
| Zyte API | Per 1,000 responses by site difficulty tier, browser rendering priced separately | Pay as you go from 0.13 USD per 1,000 | Easy sites over plain HTTP at very large volume |
| Oxylabs | Per 1,000 results by target, with included results per plan | 30 USD Starter | Enterprise contracts and Amazon at tens of millions of pages |
| WebScrap | One request per successful page, everything included | 49 USD for 50,000 pages | Google, LinkedIn, rendered and protected pages on a predictable bill |
Still deciding between the two credit APIs? Our ScrapingBee vs ScraperAPI pricing comparison prices both on the same six page types. Weighing ZenRows instead? The ZenRows vs ScraperAPI pricing breakdown runs both at two budgets, and the ScrapingBee alternative page covers the other common switch. Leaving Firecrawl as well? See the Firecrawl alternative page.
ScraperAPI alternative questions
What is the best alternative to ScraperAPI?
It depends on your target list. If most of your requests hit Google, Bing, LinkedIn or pages that need JavaScript rendering, a flat per page API such as WebScrap costs a fraction of ScraperAPI's 11 to 30 credits per page. For plain static pages at very high volume, ScraperAPI's Business plan is cheaper, and ScrapingBee is a strong pick for ordinary rendered sites.
Is there a cheaper alternative to ScraperAPI?
Yes, for expensive targets. On the 49 USD Hobby plan, ScraperAPI's 100,000 credits buy about 4,000 Google results pages, 3,333 LinkedIn pages or 9,090 rendered pages. WebScrap Starter at the same 49 USD buys 50,000 successful pages of any of those, because every successful page is one request.
How much does ScraperAPI cost?
ScraperAPI lists Hobby at 49 USD a month for 100,000 credits, Startup at 149 USD for 1,000,000, Business at 299 USD for 3,000,000, Scaling at 475 USD for 5,000,000, Professional at 975 USD and Advanced at 1,975 USD, with 10 percent off yearly, as listed on October 15, 2026. A plain page is 1 credit, Google 25 and LinkedIn 30.
Does ScraperAPI charge for failed requests?
ScraperAPI documents that it charges only for 200 and 404 responses, and that a request still failing after its 70 second retry window is not billed. So a blocked page costs nothing, but a 404 does. WebScrap bills 2xx responses only, so a dead URL in your list does not move the counter either.
Why does ScraperAPI charge 25 credits for Google?
ScraperAPI sets fixed credit rates per domain for sites that are expensive to unblock: 5 for Amazon, Walmart and eBay, 25 for any Google or Bing subdomain and 30 for LinkedIn. The rate applies whatever parameters you send, which is why rank tracking and lead lists burn credits far faster than the plan size suggests.
Is ScraperAPI good for scraping Amazon?
Yes. At 5 credits per Amazon page and with a parsed Amazon endpoint that returns JSON, ScraperAPI works out to about 0.50 USD per 1,000 product pages on its Business plan, which beats our 0.60 Growth rate. Our Scale plan is cheaper at 0.33 per 1,000 once you pass a million pages a month.
How do I switch from ScraperAPI to WebScrap?
Replace the api.scraperapi.com call with one POST to /v1/scrape. The url stays the same, render=true becomes render set to browser, country_code becomes country, and premium or ultra_premium is dropped because proxy choice is included. Run both on the same URLs for a week, compare results and costs, then move the job.
One page, one request, any domain
Google, LinkedIn, rendered and protected pages at the same flat rate. 49 USD for 50,000 successful pages on Starter, residential proxies and extraction included, blocked pages never billed.