Compared on Nov 9, 2026.

Octoparse alternatives in 2026

Ask for the data in plain words and get rows, at 5¢ to $1 a row.

Octoparse costs $0, $69 or $249 a month billed annually, plus metered add-ons: residential proxies at $3 per GB and CAPTCHA solving at $1 to $1.50 per 1,000. You build a task for each site in its application, a plan holds 10, 100 or 250 tasks, and its API exports at most 1,000 rows per request.

SpecStream is the best alternative to Octoparse for teams and agents that need the data and have no time to build and fix a task per site. SpecStream is the live web data engine for teams and agents: you ask in plain words, and it searches the live web, reads every page that holds the facts and returns structured rows that meet every condition you wrote. You see the most the run can cost before it starts, and you pay 5¢, 15¢ or $1 for each row delivered.

Get an API key

New accounts get $10 of credit, no card.

SpecStream and Octoparse side by side

	SpecStream	Octoparse
What you send	The data you want in plain words, with the conditions every row must meet	A task you build for each site in the Octoparse application, or one of its 500+ preset templates. The API cannot create or change a task
What you get back	Structured rows, one record per company, place, product or filing, with facts from many sites joined. Source URL and read time on every value	The rows your tasks extract. The API exports at most 1,000 rows per request, and data from a local run has to move to the cloud before the API can export it
Setup before the first row	None. SpecStream reads the request back as parts you can edit, and reading and pricing a request cost nothing	You build the task yourself, or Octoparse builds it: Crawler Setup starts at $399 and its Data Service at $599
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	500+ preset templates for popular sites. Pay-per-result templates cost $0.001 to $3 per 1,000 results
Search and page APIs	Search API at $5 per 1,000 searches of up to 10 results. Extract API at $0.80 per 1,000 pages, and a page with no text is not charged	The API retrieves extracted data and starts or stops tasks, at up to 20 requests per second
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 plan, billed annually: Free at $0, Standard at $69 a month, Professional at $249 a month, Enterprise by quote. Add-ons are metered: residential proxies at $3 per GB and CAPTCHA solving at $1 to $1.50 per 1,000
Limits on a plan	The same row rates on every plan. A run keeps working until it reaches the count, up to four hours on the largest requests	Free: 10 tasks, 1 device, local runs and 50,000 rows of export a month. Standard: 100 tasks and 3 concurrent cloud processes. Professional: 250 tasks and 20 concurrent cloud processes
What failed or empty work costs	Nothing. A row left out, a retry and a run that finds nothing are not charged	The plan fee is fixed. CAPTCHA solving costs $1 to $1.50 per 1,000, and failed attempts still consume credits
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 fixed plan fee plus usage-based add-on charges. Its help center says they depend on the volume of requests and calls them variable expenses
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¢	Task scheduling starts on the Standard plan at $69 a month
MCP and API	MCP server, REST API, Python and TypeScript SDKs, a CLI and A2A. An agent can buy one request with no account, by card or in USDC	Data Export API from the Standard plan and Advanced API on Professional. Its MCP server allows up to 300 requests per minute per OAuth session
Where the data goes	Google Sheets, Excel, Airtable, Notion, monday.com, HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Attio, Slack, Teams, Zapier, Make, n8n and signed webhooks	Data export, capped at 10,000 rows per export on Free and unlimited from Standard, and the Data Export API

Why Octoparse buyers move to SpecStream

One request covers every site that holds the data

On Octoparse each site is a task you build and keep working, and a plan holds 10, 100 or 250 of them. On SpecStream the request is the whole job. It can be companies, places, products, filings or tenders: "every online store in the UK that sells standing desks, with the price today and whether it is in stock", or "open school HVAC tenders in Texas, with the agency and due date". 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, reads each page and joins what it finds into one record. When a site changes its layout, you have nothing to fix.

You pay for rows, and the work behind them is free

Octoparse bills the plan, then meters proxies by the GB and CAPTCHA solving by the attempt, failed attempts included. 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. At 5¢ a row, 10,000 rows cost $500. The searches and pages behind each row cost nothing, a retry costs nothing, and a run that finds nothing costs nothing.

The price is set before the run

Every request gets a quote of the most it can cost, good for 30 minutes. Nothing runs until you approve it, the charge never goes past that amount, and whatever the run does not use goes back to your balance. An agent's key carries its own limits: total, per run and monthly.

The Search and Extract APIs are measured on public benchmarks

SpecStream's search API scores 97.9 F-score on all 1,000 official SimpleQA Verified questions (978 correct), and 64.0 item F1 and 43.4 row F1 on all 200 official WideSearch tasks. The Extract API scores 0.908 F1 on WCXB. Scores and method are at specstream.ai/benchmarks. A search costs $5 per 1,000 and a page read $0.80 per 1,000, on the same balance as your rows.

Reruns label every row and land in your tools and your agent

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 and an unchanged row costs 1¢, so rechecking 1,000 rows that did not change costs $10. New matches arrive in Slack, email, a sheet, a CRM or a signed webhook, and agents read the same rows through the MCP server at https://api.specstream.ai/mcp. Rows you already own are never charged again.

Other Octoparse 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.

Apify

A platform for cloud programs called Actors. Plans cost $0, $19, $199 or $999 a month, each turned into prepaid usage, with compute units at $0.20 to $0.13. Prepaid usage you do not consume disappears at the end of the billing cycle. SpecStream has one rate card for every request, the same on every plan.

Firecrawl

Scrape, Crawl and Search endpoints billed in credits: 1 a page, 4 more for JSON and 2 per 10 search results, on paid plans from $19 a month for 5,000 credits to $749 a month for 1,000,000. A 403 or 404 page costs 1 credit. On SpecStream the pages read to find a row are not billed.

Bright Data

Proxy networks and a Web Scraper API. The Web Scraper API costs $1.50 per 1,000 records pay as you go, and its Scale plan is $499 a month. A SpecStream row joins the facts from many sites into one record that meets every condition you wrote.

Browse AI

Robots that extract data from the sites you set up, billed in credits. A credit extracts 10 rows from a page. The Personal plan is $19 a month billed annually for 12,000 credits a year on 5 domains, and Professional is $69 a month for 60,000 credits a year on 10. A SpecStream request has no domain limit and covers every site that holds the data.

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 Octoparse

Write the data you want in plain words, in place of the tasks you build and schedule 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": "Every online store in the UK that sells standing desks, with the store name, the product page, the price today and whether it is in stock", "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.

Get an API key

Frequently asked questions

Something we didn't answer? Talk to a human

How much does Octoparse cost?

Octoparse costs $0 on the Free plan, $69 a month on Standard and $249 a month on Professional, both billed annually, and Enterprise is priced by quote. Add-ons are charged on top by use: residential proxies at $3 per GB, CAPTCHA solving at $1 to $1.50 per 1,000, and pay-per-result templates at $0.001 to $3 per 1,000 results. Crawler Setup starts at $399.

What is the best Octoparse alternative?

SpecStream, at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a delivered row. You describe the data in plain words with every condition, approve the most the run can cost, and get structured rows in your sheet, your CRM, Slack or your agent. The same request reruns on your schedule, and only delivered rows are billed.

Is Octoparse free?

Octoparse has a Free plan at $0 with 10 tasks, 1 device, local runs and 50,000 rows of export a month, up to 10,000 rows per export. Cloud runs, scheduling and the Data Export API start on Standard at $69 a month. SpecStream gives every new account $10 of credit with no card, which is up to 200 rows at 5¢, with the API and the MCP server included.

Does Octoparse have an API?

Yes, limited to 20 requests per second and 1,000 rows per export request. It retrieves extracted data and starts or stops tasks, and tasks are built in the application. The SpecStream API takes the request itself: POST /v1/agent/lists with the data you want in plain words returns the columns and the most it can cost, then the rows.

Does SpecStream have an API and an MCP server?

Yes. The Search API costs $5 per 1,000 searches, the Extract API $0.80 per 1,000 pages, and Deep Search 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row. The MCP server is at https://api.specstream.ai/mcp over Streamable HTTP, with OAuth or an API key, and an agent spends from the same balance as your team, inside the limits you set on its key.

What does a failed run cost?

On SpecStream, $0. A row left out, a retry and a run that finds nothing are not charged, and the charge never goes past the maximum you approved. On Octoparse the plan fee is fixed, and CAPTCHA solving at $1 to $1.50 per 1,000 is charged for failed attempts too.

Do I need to write code to use SpecStream?

No. Write the request in the workspace at specstream.ai, approve the price, and send the rows to your sheet or CRM, at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row. The API, the Python and TypeScript SDKs, the CLI and the MCP server are there when you want code.

Sources

SpecStream wrote this page. Each rival figure comes from that company's own page.

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
Octoparse pricingoctoparse.com/pricing, read Nov 9, 2026
Octoparse help center, plan fees and usage chargeshelpcenter.octoparse.com/en/articles/11900782-understanding-octoparse-pricing-plan-based-vs-usage-based-charges, read Nov 9, 2026
Octoparse API referenceoctoparse.com/docs/en/api-reference.md, read Nov 9, 2026
Octoparse API FAQshelpcenter.octoparse.com/en/articles/6471015-octoparse-api-faqs, read Nov 9, 2026
Octoparse MCP rate limitsoctoparse.com/docs/en/mcp/rate-limits, read Nov 9, 2026
Apify pricingapify.com/pricing, read Nov 9, 2026
Firecrawl pricingfirecrawl.dev/pricing, read Nov 9, 2026
Bright Data Web Scraper API pricingbrightdata.com/pricing/web-scraper, read Nov 9, 2026
Browse AI pricingbrowse.ai/pricing, read Nov 9, 2026