Data & Retrieval
Web scraping for AI
Turns any web page into clean text or JSON for models and agents.
Cheapest right now
As of October 2026, the cheapest API for web scraping for ai is Zyte API from Zyte at $0.13 per 1K pages, then Apify Website Content Crawler from Apify at $0.20 and ScraperAPI from ScraperAPI at $0.49. Prices verified Oct 18, 2026 against each provider's pricing page; confirm there before you buy.
What it is
Web scraping APIs fetch a page for you, run its JavaScript in a real browser if needed, get past basic bot protection, and return clean Markdown, HTML or structured JSON that a model can read. Many can also crawl a whole site or extract specific fields with a model.
How pricing works
Billed per page or in credits per page, with extra credits for JavaScript rendering, premium proxies or model-based extraction. We list the price for 1,000 ordinary pages returned as clean text on the cheapest paid plan, and say what costs extra.
We compare everything in one unit: USD per 1K pages.
Typical uses
- Feeding fresh web content to a chatbot or RAG index
- Agents that read pages they find
- Price and catalogue monitoring
- Turning documentation sites into training or reference data
- Extracting structured fields (names, prices, dates) from pages
What to compare
- Price per page and what multiplies it (rendering, proxies, extraction)
- Success rate on protected sites
- Output formats
- Site crawling and sitemap support
- Speed and concurrency limits
Watch out for
- Credit multipliers for rendering or premium proxies can make a page cost 5 to 25 times the base rate.
- Respect robots.txt and each site's terms; scraping can be restricted.
- Monthly plans expire unused credits.
All 7 APIs, cheapest first
Free to browse| API | $ / 1K pages | JavaScript rendering | Output formats | Site crawling | Quality | Price data | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zyte API Zyte | $0.13 | Yes | html, json, screenshot | No | – | Verified Oct 18, 2026 | |
| Apify Website Content Crawler Apify | $0.20 | Yes | markdown, html, json, screenshot | Yes | – | Verified Oct 18, 2026 | |
| ScrapingBee ScrapingBee | $0.25 | Yes | html, json, screenshot | No | – | Unverified sample | |
| Jina Reader Jina AI | $0.25 | Yes | markdown, html, screenshot | No | – | Unverified sample | |
| ScraperAPI ScraperAPI | $0.49 | Yes | html, json | Yes | – | Verified Oct 18, 2026 | |
| Tavily Extract Tavily | $1.60 | Yes | markdown | Yes | – | Verified Oct 18, 2026 | |
| Firecrawl Scrape and Crawl Firecrawl | $3.20 | Yes | markdown, html, json, screenshot | Yes | – | Verified Oct 18, 2026 |
Questions
- What is the cheapest API for web scraping for ai?
- Zyte API from Zyte at $0.13 per 1K pages, verified Oct 18, 2026. Proxlai ranks 5 verified offerings in this market in the same unit.
- How is API pricing for web scraping for ai compared?
- Billed per page or in credits per page, with extra credits for JavaScript rendering, premium proxies or model-based extraction. We list the price for 1,000 ordinary pages returned as clean text on the cheapest paid plan, and say what costs extra. Proxlai converts every offering to one unit, USD per 1K pages, so prices can be ranked side by side.
- How current are these prices?
- Each price shows the date it was last checked against the provider's own pricing page and links to it. In this market, prices were verified Oct 18, 2026. Sample prices that have not been checked yet are left out of this summary.