Independent cost comparison
Apify alternatives
Apify costs $739/mo on Scale at 500,000 pages a month. We priced every other product in the catalog on the same workload: 20% JavaScript, medium bot protection, US targets, 40 concurrent requests, monthly billing. The cheapest alternative depends on volume, and the billing unit is usually why.
Pricing checked Nov 5, 2026 · 9 alternatives · 0.1.0
100,000 pages / month
ScrapingBee Web Scraping API
$99
Startup · $0.99 per 1K pages
500,000 pages / month
ScrapingBee Web Scraping API
$249
Business · $0.498 per 1K pages
2 million pages / month
ScrapingBee Web Scraping API
$999
Enterprise 14 · $0.4995 per 1K pages
Apify vs 9 alternatives
Expected monthly cost on the published plan that fits
| Product | Billing | 100,000 pages | 500,000 pages | 2 million pages |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apify Apify Platform Scraping platform · Current provider Self-managed | Compute units | $163 Starter | $739 Scale | $2,682 Business |
| ScrapingBee Web Scraping API Scraping API | Credits | $99Lowest Startup | $249Lowest Business | $999Lowest Enterprise 14 |
| Zyte Zyte API Scraping API | Per successful request | $100 $100 monthly commitment | $344 $200 monthly commitment | $1,104 $500 monthly commitment |
| Firecrawl Firecrawl API Scraping API | Credits | $399 Growth | $399 Growth | $1,749 Scale |
| ScraperAPI ScraperAPI Scraping API | Credits | $149 Startup | $475 Scaling | $1,975 Advanced |
| Oxylabs Web API /Scrape Scraping API | Per successful request | $100 Basic | $500 Basic | $1,800 Flexible |
| Bright Data Web Unlocker API Web Unlocker | Per successful request | $150 Pay as you go | $651 Scale $499 | $1,999 Scale $1,999 |
| ZenRows Fetch (Universal Scraper API) Scraping API | Credits | $251 Growth G1 | $749 Scale S2 | $1,999 Scale S4 |
| Oxylabs Web Unblocker Web Unlocker | Per GB of traffic | $288 Basic | $1,152 Flexible | $4,608 Flexible |
| Browserless Browserless Cloud (BaaS, BrowserQL, REST APIs) Browser infrastructure Self-managed | Browser time | $500 Scale | $2,298 Scale | $9,944 Scale |
“Can't be priced” means no published plan fits this workload (usually a concurrency or allowance limit), not that the product is unavailable. Prices are list prices in USD, excluding promotions and taxes; the provider's checkout is authoritative.
Alternatives to Apify Apify Platform
At 500,000 pages the cheapest alternative is ScrapingBee Web Scraping API at $249/month on Business; this product is $739/month.
Apify Platform plans and sources →What changes the bill
Why the headline price is not the whole bill
- The subscription price is prepaid platform usage; compute, proxy and storage are drawn from it and extra usage is billed as overage on paid plans.
- Compute is billed by RAM-time whether or not a page succeeds, so failed attempts cost money.
- Pages per compute unit are not published as a price. Apify's own Website Content Crawler README reports roughly 0.8 CU per 1,000 pages over raw HTTP and 2-20 CU per 1,000 pages with a headless browser; the cost engine uses these as labelled assumptions.
- Annual billing is 10% off; exact annual prices were not verifiable in the static page.
- Store Actors can instead be priced per event/result by their developers; not modelled here.
- Free-plan concurrency conflicts between the pricing page (5) and the limits doc (25).
- The workload assumes 20% JavaScript, medium bot protection, US targets, 40 concurrent requests, monthly billing. Change the workload in the cost calculator to see your own ranking.
- Billing units differ: credits, requests, browser time and compute units are normalized here from each provider's published table. Add-ons such as JSON extraction, country targeting or sessions can change the effective cost.
Apify alternatives FAQ
What is the cheapest Apify alternative?
For 500,000 pages a month (20% JavaScript, medium bot protection, US targets, 40 concurrent requests, monthly billing), ScrapingBee Web Scraping API is the cheapest alternative at $249/month on Business.
Is Apify cheaper than ScrapingBee Web Scraping API?
It depends on volume. 100,000 pages: Apify $163/mo on Starter, ScrapingBee Web Scraping API $99/mo on Startup; 500,000 pages: Apify $739/mo on Scale, ScrapingBee Web Scraping API $249/mo on Business; 2 million pages: Apify $2,682/mo on Business, ScrapingBee Web Scraping API $999/mo on Enterprise 14. Prices are list prices for 20% JavaScript, medium bot protection, US targets, 40 concurrent requests, monthly billing, checked Nov 5, 2026.
Which Apify alternative is cheapest for 100,000 pages?
ScrapingBee Web Scraping API is the cheapest alternative at $99/month on Startup, for 20% JavaScript, medium bot protection, US targets, 40 concurrent requests, monthly billing.
Do these prices include JSON extraction, proxies or country targeting?
No. Each cell is the provider's published price for a basic page scrape on the cheapest fitting plan. Add-ons differ by provider; the product pages and the notes above list what changes the bill.
More ways to compare
How this page is built
Every product is priced with the same workload through the same cost engine as the calculator. The engine reads each provider's published plan table, picks the cheapest plan that fits, and keeps the source and check date behind every number. Rankings never use affiliate commissions.
Product pages list the official sources and check dates. The site's methodology explains the Fit Score and the parts of a bill the catalog does not model.