# Spider Cloud review (2026): is it worth $40 a month? > Crawl, scrape and search API with usage or concurrency pricing Checked Nov 13, 2026 ยท graded Nov 13, 2026 by ToolGPA. Spider is a hosted API that crawls, scrapes and searches the web and returns markdown or JSON, aimed at AI agents and RAG pipelines. It is the hosted version of an MIT-licensed open source Rust crawler. You pay either by usage from a prepaid balance or a flat monthly rate for concurrency. - **Category:** SERP & SEO Data APIs - **Made by:** BAGELMEN LLC - **Website:** https://spider.cloud - **Runs on:** Web - **Who should skip it:** Skip it if you want a real free plan: the signup credit is worth $0.25. - **Facts last checked:** Nov 13, 2026 ## Pricing As of Nov 13, 2026, Spider Cloud is a paid product with a free trial, starting at $40 per month for 2 concurrent requests, or pay as you go from $5. - **Pricing model:** Free trial - **Free plan:** None. - **Free trial:** New accounts get 2,500 free credits (worth $0.25) if signup passes the vendor's checks. | Plan | Price | What you get | | --- | --- | --- | | 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. | Read from https://spider.cloud/pricing on Nov 13, 2026. Prices change, so confirm with Spider Cloud before buying. ## Key features - **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. ## Good for - AI agent and RAG builders who need page content as markdown - Teams that prefer usage billing with a balance that never expires ## Worth knowing - 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. ## ToolGPA grades **GPA: 2.0 out of 4**, graded Nov 13, 2026. Spider crawls, scrapes and searches the web through one API and returns markdown, HTML or JSON. Pay as you go starts at a $5 top-up billed at $1 per GB, and Unlimited is $40 a month for 2 concurrent requests. Failed and blocked pages are still billed, and the Unlimited plan leaves out Google search. - **Value for money: C.** Pay 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. - **Free plan and trial: C.** New 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. - **Features: C.** Scrape, crawl, search, browser rendering, proxies and AI extraction. But Unlimited does not cover Google search or social automation, and failed pages are still billed. - **Ease of use: D.** No store rating on record. It is an API with a CLI, so you code against it. - **Platforms and integrations: B.** Web API with an MCP server, a CLI and integrations with CrewAI, LangChain, LlamaIndex, Dify and Flowise. The crawler core is MIT-licensed on GitHub. These are ToolGPA's own grades. Graded from this listing, whose facts were read from Spider's own pages on 13 November 2026. Not based on using the product, and shorter than our full reviews. ## Where it stands among SERP and SEO data APIs - Spider Cloud's GPA of 2.0 is higher than 5 of the 56 other SERP and SEO data APIs we grade, and level with 9. - It stands best on platforms and integrations (B, above 16 of 56) and worst on ease of use (D, above 0). - Its paid plans start at $40 a month, against a middle price of $29 for the category: 25 of the 39 others that charge start lower. - On features, ease of use and platforms it scores 2.0 out of 4. 16 tools score higher and cost less. The category's chart of price against score: https://toolgpa.com/charts/seo-data-apis ## Keep it, or make your own? **Keep it.** To replace Spider Cloud you would be making an AI agent, with the models and the safeguards behind it. That is not a weekend's work, with an AI app builder or without one. That makes this kind of software worth paying for, not this one in particular: 42 of the 56 other SERP and SEO data APIs grade higher. It costs $480 a year. Spider Cloud is open source, so there is a third way: take its code and run it yourself. - You could not: An AI agent, with the models and the safeguards behind it. - You could not: Search results fetched at scale from many countries without being blocked. - You could not: It plugs into other products, CrewAI, LangChain and LlamaIndex among them, and has an API. A judgement by ToolGPA from this listing, by rules that are the same for every tool. Nothing was built to test it. ## Works with CrewAI, LangChain, LlamaIndex, Agno, Dify, Flowise, Langflow **Tags:** Public API, Open source, AI agents, SERP API ## Alternatives - [Firecrawl](https://toolgpa.com/tools/firecrawl): Web search, scrape and crawl API that returns LLM-ready data. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/firecrawl-vs-spider-cloud) - [Jina AI](https://toolgpa.com/tools/jina-ai): Reader, search, embeddings and reranker APIs for AI search. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/jina-ai-vs-spider-cloud) - [Scrapfly](https://toolgpa.com/tools/scrapfly): Web scraping API with anti-bot unblocking, browsers and AI extraction. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/scrapfly-vs-spider-cloud) - [Zyte](https://toolgpa.com/tools/zyte): Web scraping API with ban handling, AI extraction and a SERP endpoint. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/spider-cloud-vs-zyte) - [Apify](https://toolgpa.com/tools/apify): Scraping platform with a store of ready-made Actors, Google included. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/apify-vs-spider-cloud) ## Sources The prices, plans, platforms and features above were read from these pages on Nov 13, 2026: - https://spider.cloud/pricing - https://spider.cloud - https://spider.cloud/about Page: https://toolgpa.com/tools/spider-cloud Listed by ToolGPA (toolgpa.com).