An Apify alternative that charges per page, not per compute unit
Send a URL, get the page back as HTML or Markdown in one API call. Headless Chrome and rotating proxies are in the price: 1 credit for a page without a browser, 10 rendered, and nothing for a request that fails. The $19 plan covers 100,000 pages, with no Actors to choose and no compute units, proxy traffic or storage to add up.
10,000 free credits every month · no card · one concurrent request on Free
One price per page instead of four meters
Apify bills the platform resources an Actor uses. ScrapingAnt bills the page: a fixed number of credits by request mode, with the browser and proxies included.
| Item | Apify | ScrapingAnt |
|---|---|---|
| A page fetched | Compute units for the Actor run: $0.20 per GB of RAM per hour on Starter, plus any event price the Actor’s owner sets | 1 credit without a browser, 10 in Headless Chrome |
| Proxies | Residential traffic at $8 per GB on Starter; 30 datacenter IPs included, then $1 per IP | Included in the credit price; residential pages cost 25 credits, 125 rendered |
| Storing results | Datasets at $1 per 1,000 GB-hours, plus reads and writes | Nothing to store: the page comes back in the response |
| A request that fails | Run time and traffic are billed as used | Free: no credits when the API returns a non-200 status |
Apify’s cost per page depends on the Actor, the memory it runs with and how long each page takes, so there is no fixed price to put next to ours. Our Apify pricing guide walks through an Apify bill line by line.
Checked : Apify plans and usage prices, Apify compute units, ScrapingAnt plans and ScrapingAnt credit costs. Check again before you buy.
A plan at every step, no concurrency cap
Both price lists with monthly billing. Apify plans are prepaid usage at a compute-unit price, with a cap on concurrent Actor runs. ScrapingAnt plans are credits, and paid plans have no concurrency cap.
| Monthly price | Apify | ScrapingAnt |
|---|---|---|
| $19 | Starter$19 of usage · $0.20 per compute unit · 32 concurrent runs | Enthusiast100,000 pages without a browser · no plan cap |
| $49 | No plan at this price | Startup500,000 pages without a browser · no plan cap |
| $199 | Scale$199 of usage · $0.16 per compute unit · 128 concurrent runs | No plan at this price |
| $249 | No plan at this price | Business3,000,000 pages without a browser · no plan cap |
| $599 | No plan at this price | Business Pro8,000,000 pages without a browser · no plan cap |
| $999 | Business$999 of usage · $0.13 per compute unit · 256 concurrent runs | No plan at this price |
ScrapingAnt pages are counted without a browser at 1 credit each; rendered pages cost 10. Apify’s annual billing takes 10% off its plan prices. ScrapingAnt prices are monthly.
Fetch pages straight into your own pipeline
If your job is a list of URLs and a parser you already own, you don’t need a platform around it. Send each URL to ScrapingAnt and get the page back in the response: HTML from /v2/general or clean Markdown from /v2/markdown. Nothing to deploy, schedule or store on our side.
Headless Chrome, wait_for_selector, in-page JavaScript and rotating datacenter or residential proxies are request parameters, not infrastructure you run.
Pick a country for free, and stop paying for failures
Every request goes out through rotating proxies at no extra cost. Add proxy_country to fetch from any documented country at the same credit price, or proxy_type=residential when a site blocks datacenter addresses.
When the API returns a non-200 status, the request costs nothing, so retries on a hard target don’t quietly eat your plan.
Credit costs →One request, the page back as Markdown
Export your API key, then run the request. It spends 1 credit.
# One URL in, the page as Markdown out. No browser: 1 credit.
curl --get 'https://api.scrapingant.com/v2/markdown' \
--data-urlencode "x-api-key=$SCRAPINGANT_API_KEY" \
--data-urlencode 'url=https://books.toscrape.com/' \
--data-urlencode 'browser=false'
# Pages that need JavaScript: browser=true (10 credits).
# Another country: proxy_country=FR, same price.# Captured 2026-10-24: HTTP 200, Ant-Credits-Cost: 1.
# Navigation above the heading and the rest of the list trimmed here.
# All products
**1000** results - showing **1** to **20**.
1. [](catalogue/a-light-in-the-attic_1000/index.html)
### [A Light in the ...](catalogue/a-light-in-the-attic_1000/index.html …)
£51.77
__In stockGive your AI agent the live web in one command
The hosted ScrapingAnt MCP server gives Claude Code, Cursor and other MCP clients three tools: a page as clean Markdown, HTML or plain text. Each takes url, browser, proxy_type and proxy_country, and spends credits at the API rates.
There is nothing to host or schedule. In Claude Code it is one command.
MCP server docs →Move the page fetching, keep the platform parts you use
The easy part to move is fetching known URLs: one API call per page, with the parsing in code you already own. Start with one URL pattern, compare the output with what your Actor returns, log Ant-credits-cost per page, then move the rest of the queue.
Working out what your Apify runs cost today? Our Apify pricing guide has a worksheet for it. Looking at other options too? See how we compare with Firecrawl, ScrapingBee and ScraperAPI.
Keep these on Apify
- Ready-made Actors from Apify Store for specific sites and tasks
- Running your own crawler code as Actors on Apify’s servers
- Scheduled runs
- Hosted datasets, key-value stores and request queues
What customers say
Reviews from developers who use ScrapingAnt, published on Capterra.
Read reviews on Capterra →★★★★★“Onboarding and API integration was smooth and clear. Everything works great. The support was excellent.”
★★★★★“Great communication with co-founders helped me to get the job done. Great proxy diversity and good price.”
★★★★★“This product helps me to scale and extend my business. The setup is easy and support is really good.”
Pricing
Industry leading pricing that scales with your business.
|
Plans
|
Enthusiast
100K credits / mo
$19/mo
|
★ Most Popular
Startup
500K credits / mo
$49/mo
|
Business
3M credits / mo
$249/mo
|
Business Pro
8M credits / mo
$599/mo
|
Custom
10M+ credits / mo
$699+/mo
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly API credits | 100,000 | 500,000 | 3,000,000 | 8,000,000 | 10M+ |
| Support channel | Priority email | Priority email | Priority email | Priority + dedicated | |
| Integration help | Docs only | Custom code snippets | Debug sessions | Priority debug sessions | Full enterprise onboarding |
| Expert assistance | — |  |
|
|
|
| Custom proxy pools | — | — | |
|
|
| Custom anti-bot avoidances | — | — | |
|
|
| Dedicated account manager | — | — | |
|
|
| Start Free | Start Free → | Start Free | Start Free | Talk to Sales |
Is ScrapingAnt cheaper than Apify?
For fetching pages by URL, ScrapingAnt’s price is fixed per page: the $19 Enthusiast plan covers 100,000 pages without a browser or 10,000 rendered in Headless Chrome, proxies included, and failed requests are free. Apify’s $19 Starter plan gives $19 of prepaid usage, spent on compute units ($0.20 per GB of RAM per hour), proxy traffic ($8 per GB residential), storage and any event price the Actor sets, so its cost per page depends on how long and how heavy each run is. Our Apify pricing guide has a worksheet for working out an Apify bill.
Do I need to pick or build an Actor?
No. ScrapingAnt is one endpoint: send the URL, choose browser, proxy_type and proxy_country, and get the page back as HTML or Markdown. Parsing stays in your own code, where you already handle the data.
Can I run my Apify Actor code on ScrapingAnt?
No. ScrapingAnt fetches pages; it doesn’t host your code. You can keep the Actor, or move its fetching step to ScrapingAnt and parse the returned page in your own pipeline.
How many requests can I run in parallel?
Paid ScrapingAnt plans have no concurrency limit, so the worker count is up to you and your targets. The free plan allows one request at a time. Apify plans cap concurrent Actor runs at 5 on Free, 32 on Starter, 128 on Scale and 256 on Business.
Can my AI agent use ScrapingAnt?
Yes. The hosted ScrapingAnt MCP server works in Claude Code, Cursor and other MCP clients and gives the agent three tools, get_web_page_html, get_web_page_markdown and get_web_page_text. It spends credits at the API rates, so a page as clean Markdown without a browser costs 1 credit.
How do the free plans compare?
ScrapingAnt gives 10,000 API credits every month, with one concurrent request and domain restrictions, and no card is needed. Apify Free gives $5 of prepaid usage a month.
Run your Apify URLs on the free plan
Fetch a sample of the pages your Actors scrape today, compare the output, then move the URL patterns that work.
No card needed. The free plan has domain restrictions and one concurrent request.