Ranked by lowest published entry price
| Rank | Tool | Lowest paid entry | Free option before paying |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ScrapingDog | $40/mo — 200,000 credits | Free tier $0 forever, 200 credits |
| 2 | Scrapfly | $30/mo — Discovery plan, $0.15/1,000 credits | Free tier forever key, no time limit, 1,000 credits |
| 3 (tie) | ScraperAPI | $49/mo — 100,000 credits | 7-day trial 5,000 credits |
| 3 (tie) | ScrapingBee | $49/mo — 250,000 credits | One-time trial 1,000 credits |
| 3 (tie) | Oxylabs | From $49/mo | Free trial (length not published) |
| 6 | Apify | $29/mo plan, but usage-metered on top ($0.20/CU) | Free tier $0/mo, $5 platform credit |
| 7 | Bright Data (Web Scraper API) | $1.50/1,000 records PAYG, or $499/mo plan | Free tier 5,000 records/month |
| 8 | Zyte API | $100/mo minimum committed tier | Free trial $5 credit, 30 days |
Sources (verified 25 Jul 2026): ScraperAPI · Bright Data · Oxylabs · Zyte · ScrapingBee · Apify · Scrapfly · ScrapingDog.
Apify placement note. Apify's $29/mo Starter plan is nominally the second-cheapest entry price on this list, but it isn't a fixed request cap — it's platform credit consumed at $0.20 per compute unit, and cost per page depends on which "Actor" (pre-built scraper) you run. It's ranked lower here because its real-world cost for a given project is the least predictable of the eight without picking a specific Actor first.
Why "cheapest headline price" can be the wrong question
A low monthly number only tells you the floor. Three things change what a plan actually costs for your project:
- Credit weighting. ScraperAPI, ScrapingBee, and ScrapingDog all charge more credits per request when you enable JavaScript rendering, premium/rotating proxies, or extraction features. A "$40/mo, 200,000 credits" plan can turn into far fewer than 200,000 usable pages if most of your targets need a headless browser.
- Charged-on-failure vs. not. Scrapfly and ScrapingDog explicitly state failed requests are never charged; Bright Data states the same for its per-record pricing. Vendors that don't make this guarantee on their pricing page may bill you for attempts that didn't return usable data, especially against sites with heavy anti-bot protection.
- Geotargeting gates. ScraperAPI restricts geotargeting to the US and EU on its two cheapest tiers; global geotargeting requires stepping up to the $299/mo Business tier. If your project needs non-US/EU targets on a small budget, the "cheapest" plan may not actually cover your use case.
Practical recommendation
If your project is genuinely small and you want to spend nothing while you validate it, start with an ongoing free tier — ScrapingDog (200 credits, no time limit), Scrapfly (forever key), Bright Data (5,000 records/month), or Apify's free plan — rather than a time-limited trial (ScraperAPI, Zyte, ScrapingBee, Oxylabs), which forces a purchase decision on a deadline instead of your own schedule. Once you know your real request mix (how often you need JavaScript rendering, which countries you're targeting), re-check the credit-weighted cost against your specific traffic before picking a paid plan — see the full comparison table for the pricing-model differences that matter most.