Diffbot alternatives in 2026
Rows from the live web at 5¢ to $1 each, with no monthly credit plan.
Diffbot sells monthly credits. Startup costs $299 a month for 250,000 credits and Plus costs $899 for 1,000,000, and credits do not roll over. Extract takes 1 credit for each URL you pass, and a Knowledge Graph record takes 25 credits, or 100 with a refresh. What comes back is JSON for the page you passed, or a record from Diffbot's graph.
SpecStream is the live web data engine for teams and agents, and the best alternative to Diffbot for a backfill, for an agent that needs rows and for fields that have to stay up to date. You ask for the data in plain words and approve the most the run can cost. Every match on the live web comes back as a structured row at 5¢, 15¢ or $1, with a source URL and read time on every value. A run that finds nothing costs nothing.
New accounts get $10 of credit, no card.
SpecStream and Diffbot side by side
| SpecStream | Diffbot | |
|---|---|---|
| What you send | The data you want in plain words, with the conditions every row must meet | A URL for Extract, one GET request per page with your token. A query for the Knowledge Graph or Web Search |
| What you get back | Structured rows, one record per company, place or filing, with facts from many sites joined. Source URL and read time on every value | The contents of the page you passed as structured JSON, or entity records from Diffbot's Knowledge Graph |
| The unit you pay for | A delivered row: 5¢, 15¢ or $1 by how much the row needs, plus 5¢ for an email and 15¢ for a phone. The same rate on every plan | A credit. Extract is 1 a page, or 2 through a datacenter proxy. A Knowledge Graph record is 25, and 100 for a facet query record or an Enhance record with refresh |
| Plans and balance | Pay per row from your balance. Top-ups start at $10 and never expire. Plans at $19, $99 or $499 a month turn their whole price into credit | Free at 10,000 credits a month. Startup at $299 a month for 250,000 credits, Plus at $899 for 1,000,000. Monthly credits do not roll over |
| The cost cap before a run | The most the run can cost, quoted before it starts. Nothing runs until you approve it, and there are no automatic overages | A monthly credit allotment. On a paid plan, usage past it is billed on the next invoice at $0.001 a credit on Startup and $0.0009 on Plus |
| What failed or empty work costs | Nothing. A row left out, a retry and a run that finds nothing are not charged | Extract costs 1 credit a request. A Knowledge Graph search that returns 0 entities uses no credits, and Enhance uses credits when a match is found |
| Page extraction | Extract API at $0.80 per 1,000 pages, up to 20 pages or documents a call. A page with no text is not charged | 1 credit a page: $1.20 per 1,000 pages at Startup's plan price and $0.90 at Plus, and twice that through a datacenter proxy |
| Web search | Search API at $5 per 1,000 searches of up to 10 results. 97.9 F-score on all 1,000 official SimpleQA Verified questions and 64.0 item F1 on all 200 official WideSearch tasks | Web Search at 1 credit a search. Each result carries the most relevant chunk of its page |
| Data already held | Public databases read every morning at specstream.ai/data: every company that filed a Form D since 2023 with its filing history, nearly 2 million US nonprofits, every US bank failure since 1934, federal rules, open federal contracts and grants, and local businesses. Signals such as funding rounds, new executives and layoffs at specstream.ai/signals. Ask for your own cut of any of them | Its Knowledge Graph, read at 25 credits an entity record. The Free plan reads 400 entities a month through the DQL API |
| A list you already have | Import a CSV, Excel file, Google Sheet or Airtable base of up to 20,000 rows. SpecStream fills in or checks each row and matches it to one identity, with any namesakes shown alongside their evidence. Import is free. A row that matches pays its rate, and a row that does not costs 5¢ | Knowledge Graph Enhance: 25 credits for each record matched, 100 with refresh. The Free plan covers 400 entities a month |
| Reruns and change labels | Hourly to yearly. Each row comes back labeled changed, unchanged or no longer matching. A changed or new row costs half its rate, an unchanged row 1¢ | Enhance with refresh costs 100 credits a record, four times a record without it. Crawl is on the Plus plan, with 25 active jobs |
| API, agents and delivery | MCP server, REST API, Python and TypeScript SDKs, a CLI and A2A, with delivery to Google Sheets, Excel, Airtable, HubSpot, Salesforce, Slack, Zapier, Make, n8n and signed webhooks. An agent can buy one request with no account, by card or in USDC | APIs called with a token. All APIs share one rate limit: 5 calls a minute on Free, 5 a second on Startup and 25 a second on Plus |
Why Diffbot buyers move to SpecStream
You ask for the data and get the rows
Diffbot's Extract reads the URL you pass and returns that page as JSON, and its Knowledge Graph returns the records it holds. On SpecStream the request is the whole job, for companies, places, filings, tenders or products: "Robotics companies in Germany with 50 to 500 employees, with the CEO, the head office city, the last funding round and the website". SpecStream reads the request back as parts you can edit, the conditions every row must meet and the facts to bring back, then searches the live web and joins what it finds into one record per match. A result that fails one of your conditions is not delivered and not billed.
No monthly credits to size
A Diffbot plan is a monthly allotment you size ahead of the work: $299 for 250,000 credits or $899 for 1,000,000, and what you do not use does not roll over. SpecStream bills the rows that meet your request: 5¢ for a row with up to 5 facts, 15¢ for up to 15 facts and one set of related records, and $1 for a deep row with no limit. A backfill of 10,000 rows with 5 facts costs $500, and the searches and pages behind each row are not billed. A top-up never expires, and a run that finds nothing costs nothing.
A hard maximum on every run
On a paid Diffbot plan, usage past the monthly credits is billed on the next invoice at the plan's rate per credit. SpecStream quotes the most a run can cost, good for 30 minutes, and reading and pricing a request cost nothing. Nothing runs until you or your agent approve that amount, the charge never goes past it, and whatever the run does not use goes back to your balance. An API key carries its own spending limit, so an agent spends inside the amount you set.
The rows stay up to date in your tools
A Diffbot Enhance record with a refresh costs 100 credits. On SpecStream you save the request and it reruns hourly to yearly. Each row comes back labeled changed, unchanged or no longer matching. A changed or new row costs half its rate (3¢, 8¢ or 50¢) and an unchanged row costs 1¢, so rechecking 1,000 rows that did not change costs $10. New matches and changes land in Google Sheets, Airtable, HubSpot, Salesforce, Slack or n8n with no code, or in your agent through the MCP server. Rows you already own are never charged again.
One engine for search, pages, rows and the data we hold
The same account and balance run the Search API, the Extract API and Deep Search, with the public databases SpecStream reads every morning behind them. On Nov 9, 2026, specstream.ai/data held 54,034 operating companies that filed a Form D since January 3, 2023, and 13,026 federal rules and proposed rules since January 2, 2024. On the benchmarks page SpecStream scores a 97.9 F-score on all 1,000 official SimpleQA Verified questions (978 correct), 64.0 item F1 and 43.4 row F1 on all 200 official WideSearch tasks, and the Extract API scores 0.908 F1 on WCXB.
Other Diffbot alternatives
SpecStream
The live web data engine for teams and agents. One request in plain words returns structured rows from the live web at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a delivered row, under a maximum you approve before the run. The Search API costs $5 per 1,000 searches and the Extract API $0.80 per 1,000 pages.
Exa
A search API. Search starts at $4 per 1,000 requests and page contents cost $1 per 1,000 pages for each content type, with $10 of free credits a month. A search returns links and text. SpecStream returns one finished row per match, with the facts from every site joined, and bills only the rows delivered.
Apify
A platform for cloud programs called Actors. The Starter plan costs $19 a month plus pay as you go, at $0.2 per compute unit, and its pricing page gives $2.30 for 1,000 results as an example of one Actor run. SpecStream has one rate card for every request, and one request joins the facts from many sites into each row.
Bright Data
Proxy networks, scraping APIs and a datasets marketplace, each product priced on its own. Scraper Studio starts from $1 per 1,000 requests and Datasets from $250 per 100,000 records. SpecStream builds the dataset your request describes from the live web, quotes the most it can cost before the run, and bills only the rows delivered.
How SpecStream scores
The same numbers as the benchmarks page, from the official tasks and scorers.
| SpecStream |  Parallel |  Exa |  Tavily |  Perplexity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Web researchWideSearch, GPT-5.6 Luna | 60.9 | 45.5 | 53.0 | 47.9 | 47.0 |
| Factual accuracySimpleQA Verified, GPT-5.6 Luna | 96 | 94 | 91 | 94 | 94 |
| Factual accuracySimpleQA Verified, GPT-5.6 Sol | 99 | 97 | 91 | 92 | 95 |
How to switch from Diffbot
Write the records you want as one sentence, with the conditions and the facts on each row, in place of the URLs and Knowledge Graph queries you send today. Sign up and you get $10 of credit, no card. At 5¢ a row, that is up to 200 rows.
Or send the request from code. This call spends nothing: the 402 reply shows how SpecStream read the request, the columns and the most it can cost.
curl -i https://api.specstream.ai/v1/agent/lists \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"request": "Robotics companies in Germany with 50 to 500 employees, with the CEO, the head office city, the last funding round and the website", "count": 25}'Approve that maximum by card through Stripe's Link agent wallet, or in USDC on Base, Arbitrum or Polygon, and you pay for the rows found. On an account, your agent uses the MCP server at https://api.specstream.ai/mcp and your team uses the workspace, from the same balance.
Frequently asked questions
Something we didn't answer? Talk to a human
What is the best Diffbot alternative?
How much does Diffbot cost?
How many credits does a Diffbot request use?
What happens when I pass my Diffbot credits?
Can my agent see and approve the price before a run?
Does SpecStream have an API and an MCP server?
https://api.specstream.ai/mcp over Streamable HTTP, with OAuth or an API key, and your agent spends from the same balance as your team, inside the limits you set on its key.Can SpecStream keep the rows up to date?
Sources
SpecStream wrote this page. Each rival figure comes from that company's own page, and the Vendr figure from Vendr's.
- SpecStream pricingspecstream.ai/pricing, read Nov 9, 2026
- SpecStream for agentsspecstream.ai/agents.md, read Nov 9, 2026
- SpecStream benchmarksspecstream.ai/benchmarks, read Nov 9, 2026
- SpecStream dataspecstream.ai/data, read Nov 9, 2026
- SpecStream signalsspecstream.ai/signals, read Nov 9, 2026
- Diffbot pricingdiffbot.com/pricing/, read Nov 9, 2026
- Diffbot creditsdiffbot.com/docs/credits/, read Nov 9, 2026
- Diffbot Extractdiffbot.com/docs/extract/, read Nov 9, 2026
- Diffbot Web Searchdiffbot.com/docs/web-search/, read Nov 9, 2026
- Diffbot rate limitsdiffbot.com/docs/rate-limits/, read Nov 9, 2026
- Vendr, Diffbot pricingvendr.com/marketplace/diffbot, read Nov 9, 2026
- Exa pricingexa.ai/pricing, read Nov 9, 2026
- Apify pricingapify.com/pricing, read Nov 9, 2026
- Bright Data pricingbrightdata.com/pricing, read Nov 9, 2026