Spider Cloud vs Zyte (2026): which should you pick?
As of Nov 13, 2026, Zyte grades higher than Spider Cloud: 2.4 against 2.0 out of 4.0.
Checked Oct 23, 2026 and Nov 13, 2026 · graded Oct 24, 2026 and Nov 13, 2026 by ToolGPA
Zyte grades higher on features and ease of use. They get the same grade on value for money, the free plan and platforms.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Spider Cloud
Crawl, scrape and search API with usage or concurrency pricing
Zyte
Web scraping API with ban handling, AI extraction and a SERP endpoint
Which one is for you
Pick Spider Cloud if
- Fits if you feed web pages to an AI agent or RAG pipeline as markdown
- Works for people who want a balance that never expires instead of a subscription
Look elsewhere if
- Skip it if you want a real free plan: the signup credit is worth $0.25
- Not for you if you cannot code, as it is an API, a CLI and agent integrations
- Watch out: failed or blocked pages are still billed, with a 0.01 credit minimum per page
- Watch out: Unlimited returns a 429 error above your concurrency and does not queue requests
- Watch out: zero data retention bills requests at 2.5 times the credits
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
| 2.0GPASpider CloudFair | 2.4GPAZyteFair | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | CPay as you go from a $5 top-up at $1 per GB, or Unlimited from $40 a month for 2 concurrent requests. That is inside the usual $19 to $49 range for data APIs, and cost climbs with concurrency. | 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 | CNew accounts get 2,500 free credits, worth $0.25, if signup passes the vendor's checks. It is a small taste with no free plan behind it. | 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 | CScrape, crawl, search, browser rendering, proxies and AI extraction. But Unlimited does not cover Google search or social automation, and failed pages are still billed. | 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 | DNo store rating on record. It is an API with a CLI, so you code against it. | 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 API with an MCP server, a CLI and integrations with CrewAI, LangChain, LlamaIndex, Dify and Flowise. The crawler core is MIT-licensed on GitHub. | 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 | crawling pages into markdown for AI | 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: Spider Cloud and Zyte. How we grade
Price against what you get
Spider Cloud starts at $40 a month and scores 2.0 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 $60 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, 16 score higher than Spider Cloud 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
- Spider Cloud is open source, according to its own site.
- Spider Cloud also covers AI agents.
At a glance
| Spider Cloud | Zyte | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free trial | Free trial |
| Starts at | $40 per month for 2 concurrent requests, or pay as you go from $5 | $100 per month minimum commitment |
| Free plan | None | None |
| Free trial | New accounts get 2,500 free credits (worth $0.25) if signup passes the vendor's checks | $5 of free credit for the first billing month, with no commitment |
| Web | ||
| Made by | BAGELMEN LLC | Zyte Group Limited |
| Price read from | spider.cloud | zyte.com |
| Checked | Nov 13, 2026 | Oct 23, 2026 |
Worth knowing
Spider Cloud
- Failed or blocked pages are still billed, with a 0.01 credit minimum per page.
- The Unlimited plan does not support Google search, social media automation or multi-account use; those run on pay as you go.
- Requests above your concurrency on Unlimited get a 429 error and are not queued.
- A zero data retention setting bills requests at 2.5 times the credits.
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
Spider Cloud
- Scrape, crawl and search
- One API covers all three; whole-site crawls stream back page by page as JSONL, with markdown, HTML, text or JSON output.
- Browser rendering and proxies
- JavaScript rendering and proxy rotation are not billed as multipliers; proxies in 199 countries are listed on the site.
- AI extraction
- Sends a prompt and a URL and gets structured JSON back; AI extraction has its own price listed in the pricing details.
- Agent integrations
- The site lists an MCP server, a CLI and integrations with CrewAI, LangChain, LlamaIndex, Dify and Flowise.
- Open source core
- The crawler is published under an MIT license on GitHub, and the cloud service is the hosted version.
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
Spider Cloud
Pay as you go$5
one-time top-up, used as you go
No subscription and the balance does not expire. Billed at $1 per GB of content plus $0.0001 per CPU minute; larger top-ups of $500 or more earn a bonus.
Unlimited$40
per month for 2 concurrent requests
Unlimited requests for a flat price based on concurrency, from $20 per concurrent request falling to $13 at higher volumes, up to 1,538 concurrent.
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
Spider Cloud
No public discounts listed.
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, Spider Cloud or Zyte?
As of Nov 13, 2026, Spider Cloud is cheaper to start with: $40 a month, against $100 a month for Zyte. Spider Cloud starts at $40 per month for 2 concurrent requests, or pay as you go from $5, and Zyte starts at $100 per month minimum commitment.
Which has a free plan, Spider Cloud or Zyte?
As of Nov 13, 2026, neither Spider Cloud nor Zyte has a free plan. Both have 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.