AlterLab vs Oxylabs in 2026

Each price from its own vendor

AlterLab's comparison page puts Oxylabs at $3.00 or more per 1,000 basic HTML pages. Oxylabs' own pricing page lists a custom domain at $1.00 per 1,000 results without JavaScript and $1.50 with it, on its entry tiers. Every number on this page was copied from the vendor's own page on Nov 12, 2026, and each one is listed under Sources.

One price, whatever the page needs

AlterLab starts each request at its lightest tier and bills the tier that returned the page, so 1,000 URLs cost $0.20 when a direct fetch reads them all and $20 when each needs an extended browser session. Oxylabs prices by target: Google with JavaScript at $1.35 per 1,000 results, Amazon at $0.50, a custom domain at $1.00 or $1.50 with JavaScript. A 404 counts as a result and is billed.

SpecStream charges $0.0008 for every page that gives text, whatever it took to read it. You know what 1,000 URLs cost before you send them: $0.80.

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 and a page with no text are not charged either.

Test all three on your own URLs

A ranking tests the sites its author chose. This script reads the URLs in urls.txt through all three APIs, one after the other, and prints how many pages each returned and what each run cost. AlterLab reports its cost in billing.total_credits, SpecStream in price_usd, and for Oxylabs the script counts the replies its pricing page bills.

import os

import requests

urls = [line.strip() for line in open("urls.txt") if line.strip()]

# SpecStream: up to 20 URLs a call, and the price of each call in price_usd
spec = {"pages": 0, "cost": 0.0}
for start in range(0, len(urls), 20):
    data = requests.post(
        "https://api.specstream.ai/v1/extract",
        headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['SPECSTREAM_API_KEY']}"},
        json={"urls": urls[start:start + 20], "format": "markdown"},
        timeout=120,
    ).json()["data"]
    spec["pages"] += sum(page["status"] == "ok" for page in data["results"])
    spec["cost"] += data.get("price_usd", 0)

# AlterLab: one URL a call; billing.total_credits counts $0.0002 as 200
alter = {"pages": 0, "cost": 0.0}
for url in urls:
    reply = requests.post(
        "https://api.alterlab.io/api/v1/scrape",
        headers={"X-API-Key": os.environ["ALTERLAB_API_KEY"]},
        json={"url": url},
        timeout=120,
    ).json()
    alter["pages"] += bool(reply.get("success"))
    alter["cost"] += reply.get("billing", {}).get("total_credits", 0) / 1_000_000

# Oxylabs: one universal job a call; a 2xx or 4xx reply is billed
oxy = {"pages": 0, "billed": 0}
for url in urls:
    result = requests.post(
        "https://realtime.oxylabs.io/v1/queries",
        auth=(os.environ["OXYLABS_USERNAME"], os.environ["OXYLABS_PASSWORD"]),
        json={"source": "universal", "url": url},
        timeout=180,
    ).json()["results"][0]
    oxy["pages"] += 200 <= result["status_code"] < 300
    oxy["billed"] += result["status_code"] < 500

print("SpecStream", spec)
print("AlterLab", alter)
print("Oxylabs", oxy, "at $1.00 per 1,000 results without JavaScript:", oxy["billed"] / 1000)

On SpecStream a URL that comes back blocked, empty or not_found is not in the cost line. Send the same list twice and compare the counts, not only the prices.

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). 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.

Scrapfly

A scrape API sold by monthly plan: Discovery is $30 a month for 200,000 credits. A datacenter page takes 1 credit, a residential proxy 25, and a browser adds 5. SpecStream answers Scrapfly's /scrape at https://api.specstream.ai/scrapfly/scrape for $0.80 per 1,000 pages.

Zyte API

Zyte puts each site in a price tier: $0.13 to $1.27 per 1,000 plain responses and $1.01 to $16.08 per 1,000 in a browser, pay as you go. On SpecStream every page is $0.80 per 1,000, whatever the site (Zyte alternatives).

Firecrawl

Scrape and crawl at 1 credit a page, with Hobby at $19 a month for 5,000 credits. SpecStream answers Firecrawl's v2 calls at https://api.specstream.ai/firecrawl, with pages at $0.80 per 1,000 and search from $1 per 1,000.

ScrapingBee

Hobby is $19 a month for 75,000 credits, valid for one month. JavaScript rendering is the default at 5 credits a call. SpecStream answers its HTML API at https://api.specstream.ai/scrapingbee/api/v1 for $0.80 per 1,000 pages.