Bright Data vs Apify in 2026

One key for pages, search and rows

With Bright Data, reading a page, searching and collecting records are three products with three prices. With Apify, each job is an Actor with the price its maker set. SpecStream reads any page for $0.0008, searches from $0.001 a call and returns records as rows from 5¢, all from one balance, with the most a Deep Search run can cost quoted before it starts.

The same jobs, called on SpecStream

A Web Unlocker call becomes an Extract API call, with up to 20 URLs a call. An Apify Google Search Scraper run becomes a Search API call that answers in a few seconds.

# Bright Data Web Unlocker: before
curl https://api.brightdata.com/request \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $BRIGHTDATA_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"zone": "YOUR_ZONE", "url": "https://example.com", "format": "raw"}'

# SpecStream Extract API: after, up to 20 pages a call
curl -X POST https://api.specstream.ai/v1/extract \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPECSTREAM_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"urls": ["https://example.com"], "format": "markdown"}'

# Apify Google Search Scraper: before
curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/apify~google-search-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"queries": "web scraping api pricing"}'

# SpecStream Search API: after, $0.001 for up to 10 results
curl "https://api.specstream.ai/v1/web-search?q=web+scraping+api+pricing&speed=fast" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPECSTREAM_API_KEY"

A search reply holds data.sources, the results in rank order with url, title, site and snippet, and price_usd, what the call cost.

Records from a request, not from an Actor

An Actor collects what its maker built it to collect, from the sites it was built for. Deep Search takes the records you want in plain words and returns every match on the live web as rows. Duplicates and rows a page contradicts are not charged, and a saved request reruns hourly to yearly. Source URL and read time on every value.

Scores published on the official sets

The Extract API scores 0.908 F1 on WCXB. The Search API on the same key scores 97.9 F-score on all 1,000 official SimpleQA Verified questions, 978 of them correct, and 64.0 item F1 and 43.4 row F1 on all 200 official WideSearch tasks. Every score and its method is on the benchmarks page.

Zero retention on any key

Set zero_retention when you create a key. A call made with that key keeps no request text and no answer after the reply.

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}'

ZenRows

A page API sold by monthly plan. The $19 plan holds 45,000 credits, a JavaScript page takes 5 and a protected page 25, and unused plan credits expire at every renewal. SpecStream answers ZenRows' call at https://api.specstream.ai/zenrows/v1/ at $0.80 per 1,000 pages.

AlterLab

A scrape API billed per request in five tiers, from $0.0002 for a direct fetch to $0.02 for an extended browser session, with a $10 minimum deposit. SpecStream charges $0.80 per 1,000 pages for every page, and its credit never expires.

Firecrawl

Scrape, crawl and search endpoints billed in credits: 1 credit a page and 2 credits per 10 search results, with Hobby at $19 a month for 5,000 credits. SpecStream answers Firecrawl's v2 calls at https://api.specstream.ai/firecrawl, with search at $1 per 1,000 and pages at $0.80 per 1,000.