Best web scraping APIs in 2026

One price for every page

On a credit plan, the page decides the price. A page in a browser takes 5 credits on ZenRows, ScrapingBee and Scrape.do and 10 on ScraperAPI. A protected page, with premium proxies and a browser, takes 25. ScrapingBee's stealth proxy and ScraperAPI's ultra premium with rendering take 75.

So 10,000 protected pages take 250,000 ZenRows credits, the whole of its $69 Launch L1 plan. With ScrapingBee's stealth proxy they take 750,000 credits. On SpecStream, 10,000 pages read cost $8, and a page that gives no text costs nothing.

Blocked pages are tried again, and never billed

The Extract API tries a page that refuses a plain read again as a browser would ask, then in a real browser, then from the site's own feed, then from its newest public archive capture. Each result says where it was read: read_from is live, site or archive, with captured_at for an archive copy.

A site that still refuses, or answers with a bot check, comes back as blocked and is not charged. A bot check's page is never returned as text, so a challenge page never lands in your data as content. A 404 is not charged either.

Your client stays

SpecStream answers six scraping APIs at their own paths, in their own reply form: ZenRows, ScrapingBee, ScraperAPI, Scrapfly, Scrape.do and ScrapingAnt. Each call is one Extract API page at $0.0008. Options such as js_render or premium_proxy are accepted and do not change the read or the price.

Test it on your own URLs

Every ranking tests the sites its author chose: the benchmark on Proxyway's 2026 list used 10 popular websites such as Google, Amazon, Shein and Instagram. The result that counts is your own URL list. This script reads urls.txt through the Extract API, 20 URLs a call, and prints how many pages came back, how many were blocked and what the run cost.

import collections
import os

import requests

KEY = os.environ["SPECSTREAM_API_KEY"]
urls = [line.strip() for line in open("urls.txt") if line.strip()]
status, cost = collections.Counter(), 0.0

for start in range(0, len(urls), 20):
    data = requests.post(
        "https://api.specstream.ai/v1/extract",
        headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {KEY}"},
        json={"urls": urls[start:start + 20], "format": "markdown"},
        timeout=120,
    ).json()["data"]
    status.update(page["status"] for page in data["results"])
    cost += data.get("price_usd", 0)

print(dict(status), f"${cost:.4f} for {len(urls)} URLs")

Run the same list through your current API and set the two counts side by side. On SpecStream the URLs that come back blocked, empty or not_found are not in the cost line.

Search and rows on the same key

The same key runs the Search API, the most accurate web search API in the world: 97.9 F-score on all 1,000 SimpleQA Verified questions and 64.0 item F1 on all 200 WideSearch tasks (benchmarks). A search costs $5 per 1,000, or $1 per 1,000 on the fast tier. When you need records, not pages, Deep Search returns structured rows that meet every condition you wrote, at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a delivered row.

1. SpecStream

The live web data engine for teams and agents. Its Extract API reads up to 20 URLs a call at $0.80 per 1,000 pages, with no plan, and scores 0.908 F1 on WCXB. A page that gives no text is not charged, and credit you buy never expires. New accounts get $10 of credit, no card.

2. Zyte API

Zyte puts each website in one of five tiers: $0.13 to $1.27 per 1,000 plain HTTP responses and $1.01 to $16.08 per 1,000 browser-rendered ones, pay as you go, with a $100 monthly spending limit. The benchmark on Proxyway's 2026 list gave it a 93.14% success rate. On SpecStream every page is $0.80 per 1,000, whatever the site (Zyte alternatives).

3. ZenRows

Build B1 costs $19 a month for 45,000 credits. A browser page takes 5 credits and a protected page 25, and unused plan credits expire at every renewal. Proxyway measured 70.39%. SpecStream answers ZenRows' GET /v1/ at one price per page.

4. ScrapingBee

Hobby costs $19 a month for 75,000 credits, valid for one month. JavaScript rendering is the default at 5 credits, premium proxies take 10 or 25 and the stealth proxy 75. Proxyway measured 84.47%. SpecStream answers its HTML API at /scrapingbee/api/v1 for $0.80 per 1,000 pages.

5. ScraperAPI

Hobby costs $49 a month for 100,000 credits. render=true takes 10 credits, premium proxies with rendering 25, ultra premium with rendering 75. Proxyway measured 68.95%. SpecStream answers its endpoint at /scraperapi, and a 404 there costs nothing.

6. Scrapfly

Discovery costs $30 a month for 200,000 credits, $0.15 per 1,000 credits. Residential proxies take 25 credits and a browser 5 more, and its Unblocker may upgrade the proxy pool, which can change the final cost. SpecStream answers its /scrape at /scrapfly/scrape and never bills a blocked page.

7. Scrape.do

Hobby costs $29 a month for 250,000 credits. A browser takes 5 credits, residential and mobile proxies 10, both together 25, and some domains get them by default. SpecStream answers its API at /scrapedo, where the price of a page does not depend on the domain.