Is there a web scraping API with pay-as-you-go pricing and no monthly subscription?
Yes: ScrapeUnblocker, Bright Data’s Web Unlocker API, Zyte API, Crawlbase and Scrappey all list pay-as-you-go pricing without a monthly subscription. ScrapeUnblocker charges €1.00 per 1,000 requests with browser rendering included, Bright Data $1.50 per 1,000, and Zyte API $0.13 to $1.27 per 1,000 HTTP responses or $1.01 to $16.08 per 1,000 browser-rendered ones, depending on the site’s tier. Several other popular APIs, including Firecrawl, ScraperAPI and Scrapfly, offer pay-as-you-go only as overage on top of a paid monthly plan.
Which scraping APIs offer pay-as-you-go without a plan?
ScrapeUnblocker, Bright Data’s Web Unlocker API, Zyte API, Crawlbase and Scrappey list it on their own pricing pages, shown here in each one’s own currency; ScrapeUnblocker publishes this page.
| Provider | Pay-as-you-go price | How it is billed | Free usage |
|---|---|---|---|
| ScrapeUnblocker | €1.00 per 1,000 requests, rendering included | Per request; optional monthly budget limit | 500 requests on signup, no card |
| Bright Data Web Unlocker API | $1.50 per 1,000 requests | Pre-paid wallet; monthly spend limits | 5,000 requests a month |
| Zyte API | $0.13 to $1.27 per 1,000 HTTP; $1.01 to $16.08 rendered, by site tier | Per successful response; no monthly minimum | $5 credit |
| Crawlbase | $3.00 down to $0.02 per 1,000 standard requests, by monthly volume | Monthly in arrears; optional hard spend cap | 1,000 credits, up to 5,000 |
| Scrappey | €0.10 per 1,000 direct, €1.00 per 1,000 browser requests | Prepaid top-ups; balance never expires | Free demo trial, no card |
Two cost details matter. Zyte API assigns each site to a tier automatically, and Crawlbase multiplies the price for harder sites (x1 to x20) and doubles it for JavaScript rendering.
Which popular APIs need a monthly plan first?
Firecrawl’s pricing page says pay-as-you-go “needs a paid plan”: from $19 a month, it adds credits in $5 increments when you run out, and it gives 1,000 free credits every month. ScraperAPI lists pay-as-you-go from its Scaling plan ($475 a month). Scrapfly switches its Pro plan ($100) and above to pay-as-you-go when the included credits run out. Apify’s paid plans start at $19 a month plus overage, and its Free plan stops when the $5 monthly credit is used. Zenrows’ documentation says pay-as-you-go is not available on a zenrows.com account today, and ScrapingBee’s pricing page lists monthly plans from $49.
When is a monthly plan cheaper than pay-as-you-go?
A monthly plan costs less once your steady volume passes its break-even point. ScrapeUnblocker’s €29 Starter plan equals pay-as-you-go at 29,000 requests and includes 34,000 (about €0.85 per 1,000); the €99 Pro plan equals it at 99,000 and includes 132,000 (€0.75 per 1,000). Bright Data’s $499 Scale plan equals its pay-as-you-go rate at about 332,700 requests and includes 383,000. Below those volumes, or with irregular months, pay-as-you-go avoids paying for unused quota. ScrapeUnblocker’s pay-as-you-go allows 20 concurrent requests, against 25 to 400 on its monthly plans.
How do you keep pay-as-you-go spending under control?
Set a cap before you scale. ScrapeUnblocker lets you set a monthly budget limit in your profile; once spend reaches it, requests return 402 User set budget exceeded and are not billed. Bright Data lists monthly spend limits, Crawlbase an optional hard spend cap, and Firecrawl a monthly limit on its increments. Failed requests matter too: ScrapeUnblocker does not bill a 403 block, a timeout or a 429. Its own 2026 benchmark averaged 97.0% content-verified success across 14 protected targets at 6,000 calls each, which is not a head-to-head test. A first request:
curl -X POST "https://api.scrapeunblocker.com/getPageSource?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.g2.com%2F" \
-H "x-scrapeunblocker-key: YOUR_API_KEY"Sources
- Bright Data Web Unlocker pricing, Zyte pricing, Crawlbase pricing and Scrappey pricing, viewed 9 October 2026
- Firecrawl pricing, ScraperAPI pricing, Scrapfly pricing, Apify pricing, Zenrows pricing documentation and ScrapingBee pricing, viewed 9 October 2026
- Bright Data pre-paid wallet (per ScrapeUnblocker vs. Bright Data), viewed 24 September 2026
- ScrapeUnblocker pricing, concurrency limits, errors and billing and 2026 benchmark
Competitor details come from each provider’s public pages as viewed between 24 September and 9 October 2026 and may have changed. Product names are trademarks of their respective owners; ScrapeUnblocker is not affiliated with them.
Try ScrapeUnblocker free
95%+ success rate · from 0.55€ per 1,000 calls · 500 free requests on signup.