Visibility in this ranking can be paid for. Payment moves a vendor's position within the
shortlist; it never adds a vendor, and it never changes a word of the review. The largest vendors in web scraping software
cannot hold places 1 to 3. Places 1 to 3 go to challengers, vendors outside the best-known brands in a category,
wherever the category has them; the established names follow from place 4 in their ranked order. How it works: placement disclosure ·
editorial process.
The 11 tools, reviewed
#1 Apify
Cloud platform and store of ready-made scrapers called Actors · Czech Republic · apify.com
Free plan Actor store Open-source Crawlee
Apify takes first place because it fits three buyers at once. A marketer can pick an Actor from the store, fill in a form and get a table back. A developer can write a scraper in JavaScript, Python or TypeScript and run it on Apify infrastructure without owning a server.
- Pricing: Subscription + usage. Free at $0 with $5 of prepaid usage. Free plan: free plan.
- Best for: Teams mixing ready-made and custom scrapers
- Strengths: Store of ready-made Actors (92,053 listed); Serverless cloud for your own scrapers; Crawlee library (Apache-2.0).
Where it falls short
The bill has several layers: the monthly plan, platform usage in compute units, and for many store Actors a separate per-event or per-result fee set by the Actor author. A first month can surprise a buyer who read only the plan price.
Wrong for
Not for a team that wants to point and click on a page and never see a cloud console.
Visit Apify →
#2 Firecrawl
Web data API that returns pages as clean text for AI apps · United States · firecrawl.dev
AI-ready output Open-source core Free tier
Firecrawl ranks second because it solves the job that most new scraping projects now start with: get a site into a form an AI application can read. Its own pages describe it as a context API for AI agents, and the plan table is easy to read, with credits, concurrent requests and support level in one row per tier. The free plan gives 1,000 credits with no card.
- Pricing: Credits / month. Credits per month: Free 1,000 at $0, Hobby 5,000 at $16, Standard 100,000 at $83, Growth 500,000 at $333, Scale 1,000,000 at $599, all shown billed yearly. Free plan: free plan.
- Best for: Developers feeding web data to AI apps
- Strengths: Scrape, search and crawl endpoints; Page output prepared for language models; Credit-based plans with no card on the free tier.
Where it falls short
It is built for text-shaped output, so it is a weaker fit for jobs that need raw browser control, long login sequences or screenshot pipelines. Credits are the unit, which means a credit forecast must be built from pages, searches and extras.
Wrong for
Not for an analyst who wants a point-and-click tool and a spreadsheet, or for a company that scrapes millions of pages a day behind heavy anti-bot defenses.
Visit Firecrawl →
#3 Zyte
Scraping API, Scrapy hosting and managed data delivery · Ireland · zyte.com
Pay on success Five price tiers Managed option
Zyte earns third place by being straightforward about what makes scraping expensive. Websites are sorted into five tiers, and you pay the tier price only for responses that succeed. A plain page on an easy site costs $0.13 per 1,000 in the pay-as-you-go ladder, and a heavily defended site rendered in a browser costs $16.08 per 1,000. Monthly commitments of $100 and up lower the rates.
- Pricing: Usage-based per 1,000 responses. Per 1,000 successful responses. Free plan: free trial.
- Best for: Teams that scrape hard sites at scale
- Strengths: Zyte API with automatic ban handling; Five website difficulty tiers; Browser rendering.
Where it falls short
You cannot know your price until you test the target: the calculator wants the website address and returns a tier. A buyer with twenty different sites gets twenty different rates, which makes budgeting harder than a credit plan.
Wrong for
Not for a marketer scraping a few pages into a spreadsheet, or for a buyer who wants a single predictable monthly fee.
Visit Zyte →
#4 ScrapingBee
Web scraping API that handles proxies, browsers and blocks · France · scrapingbee.com
Simple API SOC 2 Type II Paris-based
ScrapingBee sits fourth because it is the easiest of the API vendors to start with: get a key, send a URL, receive the page. The plan table prints the monthly price, the number of credits and the concurrent requests, from a $19 Hobby plan to a $5,799 top tier.
- Pricing: Credits / month. Monthly plans by API credits and concurrency: Hobby $19 for 75,000 credits, Freelance $49 for 250,000, Startup $99 for 1,000,000 and Business $249 for 3,000,000, with 1,000 free credits and no card. Free plan: free trial.
- Best for: Small developer teams needing a simple API
- Strengths: HTML scraping API; JavaScript rendering; Rotating and premium proxies.
Where it falls short
The pricing page counts credits, and the options on a request, such as rendering and proxy type, decide how many a page uses, so a cost per page needs a test run.
Wrong for
Not for a business team with no developer, and not for a data team that wants a store of prepared scrapers or managed delivery.
Visit ScrapingBee →
#5 Browse AI
No-code robots that extract and monitor website data · Canada · browse.ai
No code Change monitoring SOC 2 Type II
Browse AI is the pick for the person who needs data and does not write code. You record a robot by clicking through a page once, and it then runs on a schedule, flags changes and writes rows to a spreadsheet or an API.
- Pricing: Credits / month. Free with 50 credits a month. Free plan: free plan.
- Best for: Non-technical teams monitoring web data
- Strengths: Point-and-click robot training; Website change monitoring; 250+ prebuilt robots.
Where it falls short
Credits are the ceiling: the Free plan gives 50 a month, and the cheapest paid plan 2,000. Each plan also caps the number of websites, with extra sites sold at a few dollars a month.
Wrong for
Not for a developer who wants raw control or a team collecting millions of pages a month.
Visit Browse AI →
#6 Octoparse
Visual scraper with templates and cloud extraction · United States · octoparse.com
Visual builder 500+ templates Cloud extraction
Octoparse earns sixth place as the veteran of the visual scrapers. The company registered in December 2015 and launched the product in March 2016, and the pricing page shows a mature plan structure: a free plan with 10 tasks, Standard at $69 a month with cloud runs, residential proxies and CAPTCHA solving, and Professional at $249 with more concurrency and cloud storage exports.
- Pricing: Subscription by tasks. Free plan with 10 tasks. Free plan: free plan.
- Best for: Analysts who want a visual tool
- Strengths: Visual point-and-click task builder; 500+ preset scraping templates; Cloud extraction with concurrent runs.
Where it falls short
Plans are drawn around task counts, concurrent cloud runs and export limits, and several features that matter for blocked sites, such as residential proxies, cost extra per gigabyte. The free plan caps exports at 50,000 rows a month and 10,000 per export.
Wrong for
Not for engineering teams that already write code and want an API priced per request, or for buyers who want one flat all-in price.
Visit Octoparse →
#7 Web Scraper
Free browser extension with a paid cloud for scheduled runs · Latvia · webscraper.io
Free extension Cloud scheduling Latvia-based
Web Scraper is the entry point most beginners meet, because the extension is free and the Chrome listing carries a 4.7 rating from about 1,100 users. You define a sitemap by clicking elements, run it in the browser, and export.
- Pricing: Free extension + usage. Browser extension listed as free. Free plan: free plan.
- Best for: Beginners and small recurring jobs
- Strengths: Chrome browser extension; Sitemap-based point-and-click selectors; Cloud scraping jobs.
Where it falls short
Sitemaps are built by hand, and a site with endless scroll, logins or heavy scripts needs patience and trial and error. There is no marketplace of ready-made scrapers to fall back on.
Wrong for
Not for a team that wants a hands-off service, or a buyer scraping defended sites at industrial volume.
Visit Web Scraper →
#8 Bright Data
Large data collection platform with APIs, browsers and datasets · Israel · brightdata.com
Broad product line Datasets for sale Enterprise scale
Bright Data is a dominant name in this market, so it takes eighth place under the rule that majors sit below the top three, not because the product is weak. The pricing page lists an Unlocker API, a Crawl API, a SERP API, a Browser API, Scraper APIs for common sites, a studio for building your own and ready-made datasets, several with a free tier.
- Pricing: Usage-based. Pay-as-you-go from $1 per 1,000 requests for the Unlocker and SERP APIs, from $0.75 per 1,000 records for Scraper APIs, from $5 per GB for Browser API, and datasets from $250 per 100,000 records. Free plan: free trial.
- Best for: Larger teams buying data at volume
- Strengths: Unlocker API; Crawl API; SERP API.
Where it falls short
The product line is wide enough that a small buyer can spend an afternoon deciding which product they need. Each product carries its own unit, whether requests, records or gigabytes, so one project can pass through three meters.
Wrong for
Not for a hobbyist or a two-person team scraping a few thousand pages.
Visit Bright Data →
#9 Oxylabs
Scraping APIs and proxies under one subscription · Lithuania · oxylabs.io
One subscription Scrape and search APIs Vilnius HQ
Oxylabs is the second major in this list and sits ninth for the same reason as Bright Data. Its offer is a single subscription that unlocks every product, with published steps at $30, $100 and $500 a month and an enterprise tier from $2,500.
- Pricing: Subscription + usage. Subscription tiers Starter $30, Basic $100 and Flexible $500 a month, Enterprise from $2,500. Free plan: free trial.
- Best for: Teams wanting one invoice for APIs and proxies
- Strengths: Web API with scrape and search endpoints; Web Unblocker; Agent Browser.
Where it falls short
The subscription is a floor: even the lowest tier is $30 a month, which is more than a one-off crawl needs. Prices are quoted in dollars with VAT added where it applies.
Wrong for
Not for a person who wants pay-as-you-go with no monthly floor, or for a non-developer who wants a visual builder.
Visit Oxylabs →
#10 Diffbot
Automatic page extraction and a web-scale Knowledge Graph · United States · diffbot.com
Automatic extraction Knowledge Graph Own web crawl
Diffbot takes tenth place because it does something different from its neighbors. Instead of asking you to define fields, its Extract API reads a page and returns structured data, and the Knowledge Graph holds entities collected from its own crawl of the public web, run from its own data center in California.
- Pricing: Credits / month. Credit plans: Free with 10,000 credits a month, Startup $299 for 250,000 credits, Plus $899 for 1,000,000, Enterprise custom. Free plan: free plan.
- Best for: Teams needing entity data across the web
- Strengths: Extract API for pages; Knowledge Graph entity queries; Natural language processing API.
Where it falls short
There is a gap between the free plan, limited to 5 requests per minute, and the $299 Startup plan. Entity queries burn 25 credits each, so a research budget can disappear quickly. Crawling is available only on Plus and above.
Wrong for
Not for a team that needs a handful of known pages scraped cheaply, or for one that wants to control every selector.
Visit Diffbot →
#11 Browserbase
Cloud browsers and fetch APIs for agents and automation · United States · browserbase.com
Cloud browsers Stagehand MIT Agent runs
Browserbase closes the list because it is the least like a scraper and the most like a utility. It runs real browsers in the cloud, bills by concurrent browsers and browser hours, and adds a Fetch API that returns HTML, JSON or markdown, plus the MIT-licensed Stagehand framework for browser agents.
- Pricing: Subscription + browser hours. Free at $0. Free plan: free plan.
- Best for: Developers running browser automation at scale
- Strengths: Managed cloud browsers; Fetch API returning HTML, JSON or markdown; Search API.
Where it falls short
You write the logic. There are no ready-made scrapers and no visual builder, so extraction, retries and data cleaning stay with your team.
Wrong for
Not for a marketer, an analyst or any buyer who wants data in a spreadsheet by Friday.
Visit Browserbase →
Questions and answers
What is the best web scraping software in 2026?
Apify ranks first of 11, best for teams mixing ready-made and custom scrapers. Firecrawl is second (developers feeding web data to AI apps) and Zyte third (teams that scrape hard sites at scale). Places 1 to 3 go to challengers, vendors outside the best-known brands, wherever the category has them.
Is web scraping legal?
It depends on the data, the site's terms and the country, so no tool can answer it for you.
What is the difference between a scraper and a scraping API?
A scraper is a finished tool with a builder and a schedule, such as Octoparse, Browse AI or Web Scraper.
How much does web scraping software cost?
Entry prices run from nothing to about $100 a month.
Do I need proxies as well as a scraping tool?
Usually not. Most API vendors here, including ScrapingBee, Zyte, Oxylabs and Web Scraper Cloud, include rotating addresses in the price, and Octoparse sells residential proxies at $3 per GB as an add-on.
Which tool is best for feeding data to AI applications?
Firecrawl is the closest fit, because its API returns pages in a form language models read, and it also offers search.
Can I scrape without writing any code?
Yes. Browse AI trains a robot by clicking through a page, Octoparse uses a visual builder and more than 500 templates, and Web Scraper's extension lets you define selectors in a browser panel.
What happens when a website blocks my scraper?
The tool's anti-blocking layer decides.
Is there a free web scraping tool that is good enough?
For small jobs, yes. Web Scraper's browser extension is free, Octoparse gives 10 tasks on its free plan, Browse AI gives 50 credits a month, Firecrawl 1,000 credits and Diffbot 10,000 credits, and Apify includes $5 of usage.
How do I move from one scraping tool to another?
Code-based projects move more easily than visual ones. A scraper written with Crawlee, or one that calls an API and parses the result itself, needs a new endpoint and a new key.
Should a small company buy a managed scraping service instead?
Consider it when the data matters more than the process, such as a monthly competitor price file for a buying team.
