ScraperAPI vs Zyte (2026): which should you pick?
As of Oct 24, 2026, Zyte grades higher than ScraperAPI: 2.4 against 2.2 out of 4.0.
Checked Oct 23, 2026 · graded Oct 23, 2026 and Oct 24, 2026 by ToolGPA
Zyte grades higher on features. They get the same grade on value for money, the free plan, ease of use and platforms.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
ScraperAPI
Web scraping API with Google search endpoints, priced in API credits
Zyte
Web scraping API with ban handling, AI extraction and a SERP endpoint
Which one is for you
Pick ScraperAPI if
- Fits if you scrape Google alongside Amazon, Walmart or eBay on one key
- Works for large batches that need retries and scheduling, through the async API or DataPipeline
Look elsewhere if
- Watch out: a Google or Bing request costs 25 credits, so Hobby's 100,000 credits is about 4,000 searches
- Skip it if you need rankings outside the US and EU below Business at $269.10 a month
- Pricey if you need rendering, premium proxies or screenshots, which add 10 credits each
- Tight if you run out mid-month, as credits don't roll over and pay-as-you-go starts at Scaling, $427.50
- Tight if you're on Free, with 1,000 credits a month, about 40 Google searches
Pick Zyte if
- Fits if you already write spiders in Scrapy and want them hosted next to the API
- Works for pulling up to 100 search results per call by country, language or city
Look elsewhere if
- Pricey if you want the lower rates, which need a commitment of at least $100 a month
- Watch out: Zyte puts each site in one of five price tiers and reviews them every quarter, so a request's cost can change
- Watch out: screenshots ($1.34 per 1,000), AI extraction ($0.27 to $1.07 per 1,000 per data type), actions and residential IPs all cost extra
- Tight if you're only testing, as the $5 credit covers the first month and the account is suspended once it's spent
How we grade them
| 2.2GPAScraperAPIFair | 2.4GPAZyteFair | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | CHobby is $44.10 a month on yearly billing ($49 monthly), at the dear end of this category's usual range. A Google or Bing request is 25 credits, so 100,000 credits is about 4,000 searches, around $11 per 1,000. | CPay as you go needs no commitment: $0.13 to $1.27 per 1,000 plain responses and $1.01 to $16.08 rendered, by the tier Zyte puts a site in. The lower rates start with a $100 monthly commitment, in this category's dearest tenth, where search first pages are $0.63 per 1,000. |
| Free plan and trial | CA 7-day trial of 5,000 credits with no card, then a free plan of 1,000 credits a month. At 25 credits a search, that's 40 Google searches. | CNo free plan: $5 of credit for the first month with no commitment, and the account is suspended when it's spent until you set a spending limit. Scrapy Cloud keeps one free low-resource unit with 1-hour jobs. |
| Features | CGoogle Search, Shopping, Maps, News and Jobs endpoints, Bing, rendering, async jobs and a no-code DataPipeline. The gap is in the listing: Hobby and Startup geotarget only the US and EU, and country targeting starts at Business, $269.10. | BBan handling that picks the IP type and browser per site, CAPTCHA solving, scripted browser actions, AI extraction to JSON, a search endpoint with up to 100 results, AI Overview content and city targeting, and Scrapy Cloud hosting. Nothing in the listing shows a gap in the core job. |
| Ease of use | CJudged on how fast a developer gets a first result: SDKs, a CLI and ready Google endpoints that need no rendering turned on. No rating on record, and credit costs stack up by site and option. | CJudged on how fast a developer gets a first result: an MCP server for coding agents, and Scrapy if you already use it. No rating on record, and each site's cost depends on one of five tiers that Zyte assigns and reviews every quarter. |
| Platforms and integrations | BWeb, with an API, SDKs, a CLI and an MCP server, plus LangChain, LlamaIndex, n8n and Zapier. No desktop or phone app, so B is the top. | BWeb, with an API, Scrapy, an MCP server for Claude Code, Codex CLI, GitHub Copilot CLI and VS Code, plus Amazon S3, Google BigQuery and Google Sheets. No desktop or phone app, so B is the top. |
| Best for | Google results alongside shop and site scraping | scraping sites that block ordinary requests |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: ScraperAPI and Zyte. How we grade
Price against what you get
ScraperAPI starts at $44.10 a month and scores 2.3 out of 4 on features, ease of use and platforms. Zyte starts at $100 a month and scores 2.7.
Zyte scores higher, and starts $55.90 a month higher: the question is whether the extra is worth that to you. Of the other SERP and SEO data APIs on the chart, 8 score higher than ScraperAPI for less, and none scores higher than Zyte for less.
Features, ease of use and platforms, averaged
What paid plans start at, a month (each step along is roughly double) →
- The best score at each price
- Has a free plan
- No free plan
Where they differ
At a glance
| ScraperAPI | Zyte | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free plan | Free trial |
| Starts at | $44.10 per month for 100K API credits, billed annually ($49 billed monthly) | $100 per month minimum commitment |
| Free plan | Free plan after the trial: 1,000 API credits a month and 5 concurrent threads, no credit card needed. A Google or Bing request costs 25 credits. | None |
| Free trial | 7-day free trial with 5,000 API credits, no credit card required | $5 of free credit for the first billing month, with no commitment |
| Web | ||
| Made by | ScraperAPI | Zyte Group Limited |
| Price read from | scraperapi.com | zyte.com |
| Checked | Oct 23, 2026 | Oct 23, 2026 |
Worth knowing
ScraperAPI
- A Google or Bing request costs 25 credits, so Hobby's 100,000 credits cover about 4,000 Google searches.
- JavaScript rendering, premium proxies and screenshots each add 10 credits, and bypassing bot protection adds 10 more.
- Credits reset each billing cycle with no rollover; pay-as-you-go past the allowance starts at the Scaling plan.
- Hobby and Startup can only geotarget the US and EU; country-level targeting starts at Business.
Zyte
- Without a commitment, pay as you go costs $0.13 to $1.27 per 1,000 HTTP responses and $1.01 to $16.08 per 1,000 rendered ones, up to $100 a month.
- Each site sits in one of five price tiers that Zyte assigns and reviews quarterly, so the cost of a request depends on the site.
- Screenshots ($1.34 per 1,000), automatic extraction ($0.27 to $1.07 per 1,000 per data type), actions and residential IPs cost extra.
- When the $5 free credit runs out, the account is suspended until a spending limit is set.
Key features
ScraperAPI
- Google structured data endpoints
- Ready-made endpoints return Google Search, Shopping, Maps, News and Jobs results as JSON, without needing JavaScript rendering turned on.
- Proxy rotation and anti-bot handling
- Rotating proxy pools, premium residential and mobile IPs, CAPTCHA handling and automatic retries, with geotargeting by country on Business and up.
- JavaScript rendering and screenshots
- Load dynamic pages in a headless browser, follow a rendering instruction set, and capture screenshots of the result.
- Asynchronous API and DataPipeline
- Submit up to 50,000 jobs that retry until they succeed, or schedule large scraping jobs in DataPipeline without writing code.
- AI Parser and LLM-ready output
- Train a custom parser to get clean JSON from any source, or ask for pages as text or Markdown for language model pipelines.
- MCP server and integrations
- An MCP server, a CLI and SDKs, with LangChain, LlamaIndex, n8n and Zapier integrations.
Zyte
- Automatic ban handling
- Zyte API chooses between datacenter and residential IPs and browser rendering for each site, solves CAPTCHAs and rotates IPs, and charges only for successful responses.
- Browser rendering and actions
- Render JavaScript in a headless browser, script clicks, form fills and navigation, keep sessions, take screenshots and download files of up to 100MB.
- AI extraction
- Automatic extraction returns product, article, job and other page types as JSON; custom attributes let you describe extra fields, billed by AI tokens.
- Search results endpoint
- Returns up to 100 organic results in one call, with AI Overview content and country, language or city targeting. Pages 2 to 10 cost about 29% less than page 1.
- Scrapy Cloud
- Hosting for Scrapy spiders: a free low-resource unit with 1-hour jobs and 7 days of data, or $9 a month per unit for unlimited run time and 120 days.
- Zyte MCP
- A remote MCP server lets agents such as Claude Code, Codex CLI, GitHub Copilot CLI and VS Code fetch pages, extract data and run crawls.
Plans
ScraperAPI
Free$0
1,000 API credits a month and 5 concurrent threads, to keep scraping after the trial ends.
Hobby$44.10
per month for 100K API credits, billed annually ($49 billed monthly)
20 concurrent threads, geotargeting in the US and EU only, and 30 days of analytics history.
Startup$134.10
per month for 1M API credits, billed annually ($149 billed monthly)
50 concurrent threads, with US and EU geotargeting only.
Business$269.10
per month for 3M API credits, billed annually ($299 billed monthly)
100 concurrent threads, country-level geotargeting worldwide and unlimited analytics history.
Scaling$427.50
per month for 5M API credits, billed annually ($475 billed monthly)
200 concurrent threads, and the first plan with pay-as-you-go credits past the monthly allowance.
Professional$877.50
per month for 10.5M API credits, billed annually ($975 billed monthly)
300 threads and priority support. Advanced is $1,777.50 a month billed annually for 21.5M credits; Enterprise is custom above 22M.
Zyte
Standard, $100 commitment$100
per month minimum commitment
$0.10 to $0.95 per 1,000 HTTP responses and $0.75 to $12.00 per 1,000 browser-rendered ones, by site tier. Search first pages $0.63 per 1,000.
Standard, $200 commitment$200
per month minimum commitment
$0.08 to $0.76 per 1,000 HTTP responses and $0.60 to $9.60 per 1,000 browser-rendered ones. Search first pages $0.51 per 1,000.
Standard, $500 commitment$500
per month minimum commitment
$0.06 to $0.61 per 1,000 HTTP responses and $0.48 to $7.68 per 1,000 browser-rendered ones. Search first pages $0.40 per 1,000.
EnterpriseCustom
Larger volume discounts, $200 of free credit, 10,000 requests a minute, onboarding engineers and 24/7 support with SLAs. Through sales.
Ways to pay less
ScraperAPI
- Annual discount
10% off with yearly billing
ScraperAPI's pricing page lists 10% off every self-serve plan when billed yearly: Hobby is $44.10 a month instead of $49.
Zyte
- Education
Free Scrapy Cloud unit for students
Zyte's Scrapy Cloud pricing page says students get the benefits of one purchased unit, normally $9 a month, for free.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, ScraperAPI or Zyte?
As of Oct 23, 2026, ScraperAPI is cheaper to start with: $44.10 a month, against $100 a month for Zyte. ScraperAPI starts at $44.10 per month for 100K API credits, billed annually ($49 billed monthly), and Zyte starts at $100 per month minimum commitment.
Which has a free plan, ScraperAPI or Zyte?
As of Oct 23, 2026, only ScraperAPI has a free plan. Zyte does not, though it has a free trial.
More comparisons
How this page was made
- The verdict at the top follows a fixed rule. When both tools are in the same category and either is in our top three for it, the verdict follows that ranking: the higher-placed tool is our pick. The top three weigh who each tool suits as well as its grades, so a pick can go against the GPA. Otherwise the page does not pick one and says which grades higher: the higher GPA first; on a tie, the one with a free plan, then the one that starts cheaper in dollars a month, counted the same way for both; if they are still level, what the choice depends on.
- The grades are our own, from each tool’s review or report card. The GPA is their average.
- Prices, plans and platforms come from each tool’s listing. The table above says where each price was read and when.
- The differences and the answers to the questions are worked out from those listings.