Spider alternatives in 2026

Your Spider calls keep their bodies

SpecStream answers Spider's POST /scrape and POST /search at its own address, in Spider's JSON: a list with one object a page, holding url, content, status, error, costs, links and metadata. Spider's own SDK writes its host into every call, so the switch is the address in your HTTP call:

import requests

reply = requests.post(
    "https://api.specstream.ai/spider/scrape",  # was https://api.spider.cloud/scrape
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {SPECSTREAM_KEY}"},
    json={"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping", "return_format": "markdown"},
    timeout=60,
)
for page in reply.json():
    print(page["url"], page["status"], page["costs"], page["content"][:200])

A price per page you know before the crawl

Spider bills a request by the gigabytes of content it pulls and the CPU minutes it uses, so the cost of a crawl depends on how heavy each site is. On SpecStream every page that gives text costs $0.0008: a crawl of 10,000 pages costs $8, on any site. A page that refuses a plain read is tried again in a real browser, then from the site's own feed, then from its newest public archive capture, at the same price.

Crawls, maps and search on one key

POST /v1/map returns a site's links for one page read, and POST /v1/crawl reads the site as a job you start and then read, each page with text at $0.0008. Firecrawl's v2 crawl and map calls answer at https://api.specstream.ai/firecrawl on the same key. The Search API returns up to 100 results a call at $5 per 1,000 searches of up to 10, and Spider's /search body answers at /spider/search.

A balance with no concurrency plan

Spider's Unlimited plan is priced by concurrent requests, from $40 a month for 2. On SpecStream $40 reads 50,000 pages, there is no plan to renew, and credit you buy never expires. A busy call gets 429 with Retry-After and charges nothing. Set spend_cap_cents on a key and that key never spends past it.

Scored on the official benchmarks

Every page goes through the SpecStream Extract API, which returns the main text of up to 20 pages or documents (PDF, Word, Excel) a call. The Search API scores a 97.9 F-score on all 1,000 official SimpleQA Verified questions, with 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. The scores and the method are at specstream.ai/benchmarks.

Whole datasets as rows, kept up to date

When your AI product needs the records in place of the pages, the same key returns them. Deep Search takes a request in plain words, such as "the pricing page of every European project management software company, with each plan's name and monthly price", and returns every match on the live web as structured rows at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row, with a source URL on every value. The most a run can cost is approved before it starts. Save the request and it reruns hourly to yearly: a changed or new row costs half its rate and an unchanged row 1¢. Rows go to Sheets, a CRM, Slack, a signed webhook or your agent through the MCP server at https://api.specstream.ai/mcp.

Zero retention on any key

Set zero_retention when you create a key, or later. A call made with that key keeps no request text and no answer after the reply, and spend_cap_cents is the most the key can spend.

curl -X POST https://api.specstream.ai/v1/account/keys \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPECSTREAM_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name": "production", "scopes": ["account:read", "finds:spend"], "spend_cap_cents": 500000, "zero_retention": true}'

SpecStream

The live web data engine for teams and agents. The Extract API reads pages at $0.80 per 1,000 and scores 0.908 F1 on WCXB, the Search API costs $5 per 1,000 searches and scores 97.9 F-score on all 1,000 SimpleQA Verified questions, and Deep Search returns every match as structured rows at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row. One key, one balance that never expires.

Firecrawl

Scrape, search, map and crawl billed in credits: Hobby is $19 a month for 5,000. SpecStream answers Firecrawl's v2 calls at https://api.specstream.ai/firecrawl, and $19 reads 23,750 pages.

Tavily

Search, extract and map billed in credits, at $0.008 a credit on pay as you go. SpecStream answers Tavily's calls at https://api.specstream.ai/tavily, at $0.005 a search of up to 10 results.

ScrapingBee

A scraping API on monthly plans: Hobby is $19 a month for 75,000 API credits, and a call costs 1 to 75 credits. SpecStream answers ScrapingBee's call at https://api.specstream.ai/scrapingbee/api/v1 at $0.0008 a page.