Which Zyte alternative fits the reason you're leaving?

The right Zyte alternative depends on what’s pushing you out. Zyte’s easy HTTP pages are hard to beat on price, so switching pays off mostly when browser pages land on its upper tiers, when hard sites keep failing, or when you need something Zyte doesn’t sell.

Below, each reason for leaving gets the one or two options that fix it, priced per 1,000 successful pages on the same date as Zyte’s own tiers, plus the Scrapy path for each and a straight answer on when to stay.

Short on time?

Here's my take

Predictable monthly bills

ScraperAPI

Fixed plans from $49, a published credit cost per request type, and only 200 and 404 responses are charged.

Hard JavaScript pages

Bright Data Web Unlocker

A flat $1.50 per 1,000 successful requests, against $4.02–$16.08 for Zyte browser tiers 3–5 at PAYG.

A proxy-port setup (ex-Smart Proxy Manager)

Oxylabs Web Unblocker

The whole product is a proxy endpoint, billed only for successfully extracted data, with a $15 entry plan.

A Scrapy team on a budget

ScrapingBee

An official Scrapy middleware, and $99 a month for 1M credits covered my 100K-page mixed example.

LLM-ready markdown

Firecrawl

One credit per page returned as markdown or JSON; a different output from Zyte's raw HTML.

Replacing Scrapy Cloud

Apify

Runs existing Scrapy projects through its CLI wrapper, with a free plan that includes $5 of monthly usage.

Mostly easy HTTP pages

Stay on Zyte

$0.13 per 1,000 for tier 1 HTTP at PAYG, failed responses free. Few alternatives match that without a bigger plan.

Prices verified 12 Nov 2026. Sponsors cannot buy a verdict or a position.

How do the alternatives compare? #

Prices verified 2026-11-12, in USD. Per-1,000 figures divide a plan’s price by its included units and assume you use all of them.

Why do people leave Zyte? #

Mostly because of the bill they can’t predict or the pages that keep failing. Here are the reasons I could source, each linked to the option that fixes it:

• Tiers you don’t control. Zyte sets each site’s tier, new sites “start with a temporary tier”, and tiers are reviewed quarterly (billing docs). One Trustpilot reviewer (August 7, 2026) wrote that the spending limit didn’t work as expected and led to a surprise bill. Fix: ScraperAPI.
• Costly browser pages. Browser tiers 3–5 cost $4.02–$16.08 per 1,000 at PAYG. Fix: Bright Data Web Unlocker. Pricing.
• Hard sites failing. String’s own test of Zyte’s HTTP path got zero usable results on 14 of 100 sites; String sells a competing API. Fix: Scrapfly or Bright Data. String.
• Smart Proxy Manager’s planned retirement. Fix: Oxylabs Web Unblocker, or Zyte’s own proxy mode (see below).
• A different output or host. Markdown for LLMs (Firecrawl) or a new home for your spiders (Apify).

What exactly are you leaving? #

Zyte bills per 1,000 successful responses, at a tier from 1 to 5 that it assigns to each website and mode. New site and mode combinations “start with a temporary tier”, and tiers are reviewed quarterly with two weeks’ notice. Billing docs.

Failed and rate-limited responses are free. Pay-as-you-go stops at a $100 spending limit; commitments of $100, $200, $350 and $500 cut rates by 25%, 40%, 48% and 52%, with limits of $200, $400, $700 and $2,500. The $350 level is in the docs but not on the pricing page. Billing docs, pricing.

New accounts get $5 of credit for the first billing month, then are “suspended until you set a spending limit”. Extras stack on top: screenshots at $1.34 per 1,000 and automatic extraction at $0.27–$1.07 per 1,000 per data type, while SERP extraction is free. Billing docs.

Prices verified 2026-11-12:

Source: Zyte pricing. For worked bills at 3K, 30K and 300K requests, see my Zyte API pricing breakdown.

ScraperAPI, for a bill you can predict #

Pick it if you want a fixed monthly price and to know in advance what each kind of request costs. Plans run Hobby $49 for 100K credits, Startup $149 for 1M, Business $299 for 3M, and up to $1,975 for 21.5M; annual billing takes 10% off. Pricing, verified 2026-11-12.

A normal request costs 1 credit; the docs list rendering at “10 API Credits/req”, premium proxies at 10 and premium plus rendering at 25. Amazon, Walmart and eBay cost 5, Google and Bing 25, LinkedIn 30, and bot-protected sites 10. Only 200 and 404 responses are charged. Credit docs.

That puts an easy page at $0.15 per 1,000 on Startup and a rendered page at about $1.49–$1.64. The free offer is a 7-day trial with 5,000 credits (“No credit card required”), and the pricing FAQ also mentions a 1,000-credit free plan. For Scrapy, its proxy port at proxy-server.scraperapi.com:8001 offers “same features and performance as the API endpoint”; I found no official middleware. Pricing, proxy port.

Weak spot: on Zyte’s easiest pages it costs more unless you’re on Startup or above. My ScraperAPI pricing guide works through each plan.

Bright Data Web Unlocker, for hard JavaScript pages #

Pick it if your Zyte bill is dominated by browser tiers 2 to 5. Web Unlocker charges a flat $1.50 per 1,000 successful requests pay-as-you-go, or $499 a month for 383K requests and $1.30 per 1,000 after that. Pricing, verified 2026-11-12.

Rendering is forced “by adding the render parameter”, and the docs name no separate charge for it. Premium domains cost more at a rate shown only inside your zone, and turning on custom features bills failed requests too. Free credits are 5,000 a month from one pool shared with Bright Data’s other APIs. Features, release notes.

For Scrapy, Bright Data’s guide sets a proxy URL per request in meta, but that guide is for its proxies, and I didn’t confirm Unlocker use through it. Scrapy guide.

Weak spot: on easy HTTP pages it costs 6–12 times Zyte’s tier 1–2 price. The full head-to-head, including where the price lines cross, is in Bright Data vs Zyte.

Scrapfly, for hard sites you want to tune #

Pick it if hard sites are failing and you want to control the proxy pool and rendering per request. Plans run Discovery $30 for 200K credits, Pro $100 for 1M, Startup $250 for 2.5M and Enterprise $500 for 5.5M. Pricing, verified 2026-11-12.

A datacenter request costs 1 credit, residential 25, and JavaScript rendering adds 5. Its anti-bot option “may dynamically upgrade the proxy pool”, so hard-site costs can’t be priced from the list alone. “Scrape Failed Protection ensures that failed scrapes are not billed”, but that switches off if 30% or more are blocked without the anti-bot option. Billing.

On Pro that’s $0.10 per 1,000 easy pages, $0.60 with rendering, and $3.00 for residential plus rendering. Scrapy support is “part of our Python SDK”, and a proxy mode at proxy.scrapfly.io:7777 offers “Only a subset of scraping options”. It claims SOC 2 Type II and ISO/IEC 27001. Scrapy, proxy mode, pricing.

Weak spot: the anti-bot upgrade makes your hardest pages the least predictable line on the bill.

Oxylabs Web Unblocker, for proxy-port setups #

Pick it if your code talks to a proxy host and port, as Smart Proxy Manager setups did, and you don’t want to rewrite it as API calls. Its endpoint is unblock.oxylabs.io:60000, and Oxylabs says “We will only charge you for successfully extracted data”. Web Unblocker.

It bills per GB at $7.20, $6, $4.80, and $3 from 833 GB; the product page doesn’t map each rate to a plan. Oxylabs runs one shared subscription for all its products: Starter $15, Basic $100 and Flexible $500 a month, with Enterprise from $2,500, and $5 of welcome credit. Credits expire at the end of each billing cycle (Web Unblocker, pricing, verified 2026-11-12).

Per-page cost depends on page weight. As a pure illustration, if pages averaged 100 KB, 1,000 of them would be about 0.1 GB, or roughly $0.72 at $7.20/GB. Scrapy uses it through the normal proxy setting.

Weak spot: a per-GB bill is hard to compare with Zyte’s per-response tiers until you know your page sizes. The page’s metadata also mentions a one-week free trial while the body offers $5 credits; I’d trust the body. For other unblocking proxies side by side, see the best web unblockers.

ZenRows, for a free monthly allowance #

Pick it if you want a recurring free tier to keep small jobs running and a ready-made Scrapy middleware. ZenRows gives 5,000 free credits a month with “no card required”; paid plans run Build $19–$39, Launch $69–$129, Growth $199–$399 and Scale $549–$2,999. Pricing, verified 2026-11-12.

A standard request costs 1 credit, JavaScript 5, premium proxies 10, and both 25. “Failed requests are never charged.” On Build ($19 for 45K credits), that’s $0.42 per 1,000 easy pages and $2.11 rendered. Pricing.

For Scrapy, ZenRows documents the scrapy-zenrows package with a ZenRowsMiddleware class. Scrapy docs. Its other costs are in my ZenRows pricing breakdown.

Weak spot: pricing is a slider with 14 paid rungs, so check where your credit total lands: my 100K-page example needs Launch’s $99 rung (500K credits), not the $69 one.

ScrapingBee, for Scrapy teams on a budget #

Pick it if you run Scrapy, your pages are mostly simple, and you want the lowest monthly bill. Plans run Hobby $19 for 75K credits, Freelance $49 for 250K, Startup $99 for 1M and Business $249 for 3M, and credits last one month with no rollover (pricing, verified 2026-11-12).

JavaScript rendering is on by default and “costs 5 credits per request”, so turn it off for plain pages. Premium proxies cost 10 credits without rendering and 25 with it, and stealth costs 75. Docs.

On Startup that’s about $0.10 per 1,000 easy pages, $0.50 rendered and $2.48 for premium plus rendering. The official scrapy-scrapingbee package adds “JavaScript support and proxy rotation for Scrapy”. You get 1,000 free credits with no card, and more detail is in ScrapingBee pricing.

Weak spot: I couldn’t find a general statement that failed requests are free.

Crawlbase, for very high volume #

Pick it if you push millions of requests a month and want the per-request price to fall automatically. Crawlbase bills successful requests in bands: $3.00 per 1,000 for the first 1K, $2.00 for the next 10K, $0.60 for the next 100K, $0.50 for the next 1M, $0.10 for the next 10M, then down to $0.02. Pricing, verified 2026-11-12.

That blends to about $0.76 per 1,000 at 100K requests a month and $0.53 at 1M. JavaScript requests cost twice as much, and failed or blocked requests are free.

Those rates are for standard sites: Crawlbase multiplies harder sites’ totals by 1.5 up to 20. New accounts get 1,000 free credits, rising to 5,000 after setup steps. Pricing.

Weak spot: the first 11K requests each month cost more than Zyte’s priciest HTTP tier, and I found no Scrapy middleware. My Crawlbase pricing breakdown walks through the ladder and the difficulty tiers.

Firecrawl, for LLM-ready markdown #

Pick it if you’re feeding pages to an LLM and want clean markdown or JSON back, not raw HTML. A scrape costs 1 credit per page, and JSON extraction adds 4. Plans run Free (1,000 credits, no card), Hobby $19 for 5,000, Standard $99 for 100K, Growth $399 for 500K and Scale $749 for 1M (pricing, verified 2026-11-12).

That’s $0.99 per 1,000 pages on Standard, rendered or not. My Firecrawl pricing guide covers its other endpoints.

Weak spot: it’s a different output, not a drop-in fetcher, and I found no Scrapy middleware or proxy port.

Apify, to replace Scrapy Cloud #

Pick it if what you really want to leave is Scrapy Cloud, not Zyte API. Apify says “Scrapy projects can now be executed on the Apify platform using our dedicated wrapping tool”. Apify Scrapy docs.

Plans run Free ($5 of monthly usage, no card), Starter $19, Scale $199 and Business $999. Compute units cost $0.20 down to $0.13, and residential proxy traffic $8 down to $7 per GB (pricing, verified 2026-11-12). For comparison, Zyte’s paid Scrapy Cloud unit is $9 a month. Scrapy Cloud.

Weak spot: you pay for compute and proxy traffic separately, so there’s no per-page price to compare. My Apify pricing guide walks through it.

Where does switching actually save money? #

On browser tiers 3–5, nearly always. On HTTP tiers 1–2, rarely. This table puts each Zyte tier next to the alternatives that match or beat it at list price, per 1,000 successful pages, verified 2026-11-12.

Matching a Zyte tier to another vendor’s credit type is my assumption: Zyte tiers are per site, while credits are per request option. And no alternative bills $0.10 without the matching monthly spend.

A worked example: 100K pages a month #

Assume 70K pages on Zyte HTTP tier 2, 20K on browser tier 2 and 10K on browser tier 4, all successful, no add-ons. On the alternatives I map those to a plain request, a rendered request and a premium-plus-rendered request.

Crawlbase’s page says the JavaScript multiplier applies to “a group’s ladder total” but doesn’t define a group, so I show both readings. Crawlbase pricing, ZenRows pricing.

For a mostly easy mix like this, Zyte sits in the same rough $90–$150 range as everyone else, so switching to save money doesn’t pay. Shift that mix toward browser tiers 3–5 and the savings get large fast.

Which one gets blocked less? #

Four published tests give Zyte four different results, and each was run by a party with a stake or a narrow setup. I have not measured any of these services.

String’s test code and raw results are public, which I appreciate, and its README notes that String’s own score “reflects our own server-side routing”. But it tested only Zyte’s HTTP path, so it understates Zyte on JavaScript-heavy sites. String test code.

My read: Zyte isn’t weak across the board, but its HTTP path struggles on some hard sites. If that’s your problem, pricing a browser-tier fallback on Zyte against Bright Data or Scrapfly is the fair comparison.

Were you on Smart Proxy Manager? #

Zyte announced it would retire Smart Proxy Manager (formerly Crawlera). Its sunset page says “We plan to complete the automigration during Tuesday, December 9, 2025”, routing the shared proxy.crawlera.com and proxy.zyte.com endpoints to Zyte API’s proxy mode and turning SPM plans into a “Migration Plan” with the same commitment and twice the spending limit.

The page reads as advance notice, so I can’t confirm from it that the move finished on that date. Sunset FAQ.

“You cannot use your Smart Proxy Manager API key for Zyte API”, but scrapy-zyte-smartproxy works with a Zyte API key. Proxy mode itself lacks screenshots, actions, network capture, extraction and server-managed sessions, and isn’t “optimized for use in combination with browser automation tools”. Migration guide, proxy mode.

If you’d rather keep a proxy port somewhere else, three alternatives document one: Oxylabs Web Unblocker (:60000), ScraperAPI (:8001, full API features) and Scrapfly (:7777, a subset). Bright Data and ZenRows may support proxy-style use, but I didn’t confirm it in their docs.

Not a developer API you need? #

Some readers searching for Zyte alternatives aren’t really shopping for another API:

• You want the data delivered, not a tool. Zyte Data is Zyte’s managed option; Grepsr and ScrapeHero sell similar managed services. Grepsr’s own Zyte comparison lists no prices, so expect a quote.
• Nobody on the team writes code. Browse AI is a no-code tool; its Zyte comparison says “We’ve left dollar figures out on purpose.”
• You only need raw IPs. That’s a proxy purchase, not an API; scraping API vs proxies explains the trade.
• You only used Zyte for search results. Zyte’s SERP extraction is free, which is a reason to stay. If you want a dedicated SERP API, my best SERP API roundup compares them, apiserpent.com among them.

When should you stay on Zyte? #

Stay if most of your pages sit on HTTP tiers 1–2. Tier 1 at $0.13 per 1,000 pay-as-you-go isn’t matched here without a $99–$299 monthly plan, and only Scrapfly’s $30 Discovery plan ($0.15) and ScrapingBee’s $49 Freelance plan (about $0.20) undercut tier 2’s $0.23 at a small spend. Failed and rate-limited responses stay free. Pricing, billing.

Stay too if your team lives in Scrapy and Scrapy Cloud. The scrapy-zyte-api plugin, Scrapy Cloud at $9 a unit, and free SERP extraction are hard to rebuild elsewhere. Zyte also now runs a hosted MCP server that’s free to connect, with calls billed at API prices. Scrapy Cloud, MCP.

If only a few hard sites hurt, move just those. Routing browser tier 3+ sites to Bright Data’s Unlocker and keeping the rest on Zyte is often cheaper than moving everything.

What do other pages still say? #

Which alternative would I pick? #

For a predictable bill: ScraperAPI. The credit cost of each request type is published, plans are flat, and only 200 and 404 responses count. I’d start on Startup ($149), where easy pages cost $0.15 per 1,000.

For hard JavaScript pages: Bright Data Web Unlocker. $1.50 flat beats Zyte’s $4.02–$16.08 browser tiers by a wide margin. I’d move only the hard sites and keep easy ones on Zyte.

For hard sites you want to tune: Scrapfly. Per-request control over proxy pool and rendering, failed scrapes not billed, and SOC 2 and ISO claims if procurement asks.

For a proxy-port setup: Oxylabs Web Unblocker. It is built as a proxy endpoint, which is the smallest code change from Smart Proxy Manager. If you’d rather keep per-request pricing, ScraperAPI’s proxy port is the runner-up.

For a Scrapy team on a budget: ScrapingBee. An official middleware, and $99 for 1M credits covered my whole 100K-page worked example. ZenRows is the alternative if a free 5,000 credits a month matters more.

For millions of requests a month: Crawlbase. Its bands fall to $0.10 per 1,000 past about 1.1M requests, then lower.

For LLM-ready markdown: Firecrawl. For a Scrapy Cloud replacement: Apify. And if most of your pages are easy HTTP pages, stay on Zyte.

For a wider field, see the scraping API pillar, the cheapest web scraping APIs, and how scraping API credits work.

FAQ #

What is the best alternative to Zyte? #

It depends on why you are leaving, so here is one pick per reason. For a predictable bill, ScraperAPI. For hard JavaScript pages, Bright Data Web Unlocker at a flat $1.50 per 1,000.

For a Scrapy team on a budget, ScrapingBee. For a proxy-port setup, Oxylabs Web Unblocker. For LLM-ready markdown, Firecrawl. If your pages are mostly easy HTTP pages, stay on Zyte.

Is there a cheaper alternative to Zyte API? #

Mostly on browser pages. Zyte’s HTTP tier 1 costs $0.13 per 1,000 at pay-as-you-go, and no alternative here matches it without a $99 to $299 monthly plan; tier 2 ($0.23) is undercut at small spend only by Scrapfly’s $30 Discovery plan ($0.15) and ScrapingBee’s $49 Freelance plan (about $0.20).

On browser tiers 3 to 5 ($4.02 to $16.08 PAYG), Bright Data’s flat $1.50 and several credit APIs cost much less. Prices verified 2026-11-12. Zyte, Bright Data.

What replaced Zyte Smart Proxy Manager (Crawlera)? #

Zyte API’s proxy mode, under Zyte’s announced plan. Zyte announced it planned to automigrate Smart Proxy Manager users on December 9, 2025, moving their plans to a Migration Plan with the same commitment and twice the spending limit. Outside Zyte, ScraperAPI, Scrapfly and Oxylabs Web Unblocker document proxy-port endpoints. Sunset FAQ.

Can I keep using Scrapy if I leave Zyte? #

Yes. ScrapingBee maintains scrapy-scrapingbee, ZenRows documents a scrapy-zenrows middleware, Scrapfly ships Scrapy classes in its Python SDK, and ScraperAPI’s proxy port works through Scrapy’s proxy setting. Apify can run existing Scrapy projects if you are replacing Scrapy Cloud. ScrapingBee, ZenRows.

Does Zyte charge for failed requests? #

No. Zyte charges only for successful responses, and rate-limited and unsuccessful responses are free.

ZenRows, Crawlbase and Bright Data Web Unlocker also say failed requests are not billed; Scrapfly does too, with a rule that turns off if 30% or more are blocked without its anti-bot option. ScraperAPI charges only 200 and 404 responses. Zyte billing.

What is an alternative to Scrapy Cloud? #

Apify can run Scrapy projects through its CLI wrapper, with plans from free ($5 of monthly usage) to $999 a month. Self-hosting your spiders with a scraping API or proxies is the other route. Zyte’s own Scrapy Cloud lists $9 a month per paid unit. Apify, Scrapy Cloud.

Sources

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