ScrapeUnblocker vs. Crawlbase: Pricing, Billing and Features Compared (2026)
ScrapeUnblocker and the Crawlbase Crawling API solve the same problem: you send a URL to an API, and it returns the page, with proxies, JavaScript rendering and bot protection handled for you. The biggest difference is how they count usage. Crawlbase bills in credits: one for a standard request, twice as many when the page is rendered in a real browser, and a site-difficulty multiplier between 1 and 20 on top. ScrapeUnblocker charges one credit per request, with browser rendering always on.
A note before we start: we make ScrapeUnblocker, so we are not a neutral party. To keep this comparison fair and checkable, every Crawlbase figure below comes from Crawlbase’s own public pricing page, Crawling API product page, FAQ and documentation, as we viewed them on 24 September 2026. Every ScrapeUnblocker figure comes from our pricing page and documentation. Where we do not know something, we say so. Prices and features change, so please check both sites before you decide.
Crawlbase also sells an Enterprise Crawler, a Smart AI Proxy and Cloud Storage on the same credit balance. We compare only the Crawling API, the product closest to ours.
At a glance
| ScrapeUnblocker | Crawlbase Crawling API | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | 1 request = 1 credit | 1 credit per standard request; JavaScript rendering doubles it; site-difficulty multipliers from ×1 to ×20 |
| JavaScript rendering | Always on, in a real browser | Optional (JavaScript token), doubles the credits |
| Pay as you go | €1.00 per 1,000 requests | No monthly fee; graduated rates from $3.00 down to $0.02 per 1,000 standard requests |
| Monthly plans | From €29 per month (34,000 requests) | Optional subscriptions from $99 per month (200,000 credits) |
| Largest self-serve plan | €1,000 per month (Ultimate), 1,818,000 requests | $599 per month (Growth), 2,000,000 credits |
| Free trial | 500 requests, no card needed | 1,000 free credits (up to 5,000 after setup steps), no card |
| Throughput limit | 2 to 10 requests per second on Pay as you go, Starter and Pro; up to 400 on Business, Scale and Ultimate | 20 concurrent requests per token by default |
| Currency | EUR | USD |
How Crawlbase pricing works
Crawlbase’s pricing page describes one rate card for all its products. Every account starts on pay as you go; a subscription is optional.
Pay as you go has no monthly fee, is billed monthly in arrears and can have a hard spend cap. Each bracket of monthly volume is billed at its own rate:
| Monthly successful requests | Price per 1,000 standard requests |
|---|---|
| First 1,000 | $3.00 |
| Next 10,000 | $2.00 |
| Next 100,000 | $0.60 |
| Next 1,000,000 | $0.50 |
| Next 10,000,000 | $0.10 |
| Next 100,000,000 | $0.05 |
| Next 1,000,000,000 | $0.04 |
| Beyond | $0.02 |
Its worked examples for standard requests: 100,000 cost $76.40, 1,000,000 cost $527.50 and 10,000,000 cost $1,471.90.
Subscriptions buy a monthly block of credits at a lower effective rate:
| Plan | Price per month | Credits per month | Price per 1,000 credits, as stated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $99 | 200,000 | about $0.50 |
| Scale 500K | $199 | 500,000 | about $0.40 |
| Scale 1M | $349 | 1,000,000 | about $0.35 |
| Growth | $599 | 2,000,000 | about $0.30 |
Yearly billing gives one month free. The block resets monthly, and usage past it continues on the pay-as-you-go ladder “at the bracket your volume already reached”, unless you turn pay as you go off. Enterprise adds custom volume, SLAs and invoicing.
Credits set the price of each request. One credit is one standard request, rendering in a real browser “doubles the credits of any request, whatever the site tier”, and heavily defended sites carry an automatic difficulty multiplier:
| Site difficulty tier | Multiplier | Credits per request with JavaScript |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | ×1 | 2 |
| Moderate | ×1.5 | 3 |
| Complex | ×2 | 4 |
| Complex I | ×3 | 6 |
| Complex II | ×4.5 | 9 |
| Extreme | ×9 | 18 |
| Extreme I | ×13.5 | 27 |
| Extreme II | ×20 | 40 |
On pay as you go, the same multipliers apply to the ladder total. Each response carries an X-Domain-Complexity header which, according to the documentation, “maps directly onto the pricing tier billed for the request”. Built-in JSON scrapers cost the same as raw HTML, and a screenshot costs 2 credits.
How ScrapeUnblocker pricing works
ScrapeUnblocker has a pay-as-you-go option and monthly plans. Our pricing page states that one request always equals one credit.
| Plan | Price | Requests included | Effective price per 1,000 | Additional usage per 1,000 | Rate limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pay as you go | €1.00 per 1,000 requests | - | €1.00 | - | 2 requests/second |
| Starter | €29 per month | 34,000 | about €0.85 | €0.95 | 5 requests/second |
| Pro | €99 per month | 132,000 | about €0.75 | €0.85 | 10 requests/second |
| Business | €299 per month | 440,000 | about €0.68 | €0.75 | Up to 400 requests/second |
| Scale | €599 per month | 966,000 | about €0.62 | €0.68 | Up to 400 requests/second |
| Ultimate | €1,000 per month | 1,818,000 | about €0.55 | €0.60 | Up to 400 requests/second |
There is also a custom Enterprise option. Pay as you go has no monthly commitment. Our plan cards list JavaScript rendering, CAPTCHA bypass and a real browser, and none of these is charged separately: a rendered page costs the same one credit as any other request.
Price per 1,000 requests, side by side
What a Crawlbase plan buys depends on each site’s tier and on whether you render JavaScript. ScrapeUnblocker renders every request in a real browser, so the closest Crawlbase configuration is a JavaScript request; but many sites do not need a browser, so we show both. The tables divide plan credits by the published multipliers, assuming one configuration all month. Crawlbase prices in US dollars and ScrapeUnblocker in euros; we have not converted between them, because exchange rates move.
Around 99 per month:
| Plan and configuration | Requests per month | Price per 1,000 requests |
|---|---|---|
| ScrapeUnblocker Pro (€99) | 132,000 | about €0.75 |
| Crawlbase Starter ($99), standard, no JS | 200,000 | about $0.50 |
| Crawlbase Starter ($99), standard + JS | 100,000 | about $0.99 |
| Crawlbase Starter ($99), moderate + JS | 66,666 | about $1.49 |
| Crawlbase Starter ($99), Extreme II + JS | 5,000 | about $19.80 |
Around 599 per month:
| Plan and configuration | Requests per month | Price per 1,000 requests |
|---|---|---|
| ScrapeUnblocker Scale (€599) | 966,000 | about €0.62 |
| Crawlbase Growth ($599), standard, no JS | 2,000,000 | about $0.30 |
| Crawlbase Growth ($599), standard + JS | 1,000,000 | about $0.60 |
| Crawlbase Growth ($599), moderate + JS | 666,666 | about $0.90 |
| Crawlbase Growth ($599), Extreme II + JS | 50,000 | about $11.98 |
On pay as you go, JavaScript doubles Crawlbase’s worked examples: 100,000 standard requests become $152.80 and 1,000,000 become $1,055.00. Our pay as you go would charge €100 and €1,000, and our Pro and Scale plans cover 132,000 requests for €99 and 966,000 for €599.
How to read these numbers
Here is the honest reading. If your sites are standard on Crawlbase and need no browser, it covers more requests for a similar nominal amount than we do, and past about 1.1 million requests a month its ladder drops to $0.10 per 1,000 and below.
With JavaScript rendering on standard sites, it depends on plan size and the exchange rate. At the listed prices, ScrapeUnblocker’s price per 1,000 is lower at the 99 level as long as one euro costs less than $1.32, and Crawlbase’s is lower at the 599 level as long as one euro costs more than $0.97.
On Crawlbase’s higher tiers, a rendered request draws 3 to 40 credits: about $0.90 to $19.80 per 1,000 requests across its four subscriptions, against €0.55 to €1.00 on ScrapeUnblocker. Which tier your sites fall into, and whether they need a browser there, decides most of the difference, and only a test on your own URLs will show it.
What you pay for when a request fails
Both services say they do not charge for failed requests. Here is what each one’s documentation says.
Crawlbase. Its pricing page says that “a request that fails or is blocked is never billed, whatever the site or rendering mode”. The Crawling API documentation gives the exact rule: a request is charged only when Crawlbase’s own status (cb_status) is 200 and the target’s status (original_status) is 200, 201, 204, 301, 302 (only when the redirect was followed and returned content), 404 or 410. Anything else is free; for example, a CAPTCHA page served with a 200 is reported as cb_status: 503. One more rule matters for browser work: requests with scroll are billed by processing time, one request for the first 8 seconds and one more for every further 5 seconds or part of them.
ScrapeUnblocker. Per our errors documentation, a delivered page (200) is billed. When the target itself answers 404 or 410, or its origin returns its own 5xx error page, we return a 200 with an X-Origin-Status header carrying the target’s status, and that is billed too. A domain that does not exist (400 Hostname cannot be resolved) is billed, and so is a browser steps action that fails after the page has rendered (422 step_failed). A 403 (blocked by the target’s bot protection on every bypass path we have), timeouts, 523 Origin unreachable, 429 rate limit, 402 out of quota and all errors on our side are not billed.
| Outcome | ScrapeUnblocker | Crawlbase Crawling API |
|---|---|---|
| Page delivered | Billed | Billed |
| Target answers 404 or 410 | Billed (200 with X-Origin-Status) | Billed |
| Target returns its own 5xx error page | Billed (200 with X-Origin-Status) | Not billed |
| Blocked by the target’s bot protection | Not billed (403) | Not billed (for example cb_status 525) |
| Domain does not exist | Billed (400) | Not described separately in the pages we checked |
| A requested click or step fails | Billed (422 step_failed) | Not billed (cb_status 595, selector not found) |
One caveat applies to both. Each service decides for itself whether a response counts as a block. If a challenge page comes back looking like a normal page, whether it is caught depends on that service’s detection. We have not tested how Crawlbase handles this.
Features compared
| Feature | ScrapeUnblocker | Crawlbase Crawling API |
|---|---|---|
| JavaScript rendering | Always on, in a real browser | Optional: JavaScript token (headless Chrome) or javascript=true |
| Geotargeting | proxy_country, with a published country list | country, with a published list; may be overridden to auto-select a proxy |
| Output | HTML, or structured JSON with parsed_data=true | HTML, JSON, Markdown or PDF; structured JSON via scraper= or autoparse=true |
| Page interaction | steps: click, type, select, press keys, scroll, wait (up to about 10), plus list_elements | css_click_selector (clicks), scroll, page_wait, ajax_wait; custom JavaScript per account on request |
| Screenshots | Not offered | screenshot=true |
| Asynchronous requests | Not offered | async=true with a webhook or Cloud Storage |
| Headers and cookies | No custom request headers; get_cookies=true returns cookies and the proxy used | request_headers, cookies, sticky cookies_session, get_cookies=true |
| Google search | /serpApi: organic results, ads and Google’s AI overview as JSON | google-serp scraper: organic results, ads, related searches, “People also ask”, knowledge panel |
| Site-specific scrapers | Plugin endpoints, for example Amazon, eBay, Walmart, TikTok and Booking.com | Built-in scrapers, for example Amazon, Google, Instagram, LinkedIn and eBay |
| Maximum request time | 60 seconds (90 with steps) | 90 seconds |
| Client libraries | Python, Node.js, Ruby, PHP | Python, Node.js, Ruby, PHP, Go, Java, C#/.NET |
| AI tooling | MCP server (Claude, ChatGPT and other MCP clients), Claude Code plugin | Web MCP Server, local or hosted, with setup guides for several AI clients |
| Other integrations | Scrapy middleware, n8n node, Apify actors | LangChain, Zapier, n8n; Make and Airbyte in development |
A note on rate limits. Crawlbase caps how many requests a token has in flight at once: 20 by default, raised for customers with the volume. ScrapeUnblocker states requests per second. The units cannot be compared directly, because the throughput a concurrency limit gives depends on how long each request takes.
On free trials: Crawlbase’s FAQ says free credits work for JavaScript requests too. At 2 credits per rendered standard request, 1,000 to 5,000 credits is 500 to 2,500 rendered requests. ScrapeUnblocker gives 500 requests.
When Crawlbase may be the better fit
- Many of your targets are standard sites that work without a browser (1 credit per request), or you send millions of standard requests a month, where its ladder drops to $0.10 per 1,000 and below.
- Your sites are standard on Crawlbase and need rendering at around 1,000,000 requests a month: Growth works out to about $0.60 per 1,000, against about €0.62 on our Scale plan.
- You need screenshots, PDF or Markdown output, asynchronous requests, custom headers and cookies, or
.onionsites via itstor_networkoption. - You want a larger free allowance (up to 5,000 credits), an official library for Go, Java or C#/.NET, or a Zapier or LangChain integration.
- You want one balance for a scraping API, a proxy and cloud storage, or already have a working Crawlbase setup.
When ScrapeUnblocker may be the better fit
- Your targets need JavaScript rendering and fall into Crawlbase’s higher difficulty tiers, and you want the same price per request whatever the site.
- You want to predict your bill from request volume alone, without tracking tiers, multipliers or time-based scroll billing.
- Your volume is small: our pay as you go is a flat €1.00 per 1,000 and our plans start at €29, while Crawlbase bills each month’s first 11,000 standard requests at $3.00 and $2.00 per 1,000.
- You need to type, select or press keys inside the same request, at the same one-credit price. Crawlbase documents clicks, scrolling and waits, plus custom JavaScript on request.
- You prefer to be billed in euros.
What this comparison does not tell you
- Success rates. We have not run Crawlbase and ScrapeUnblocker against the same set of sites, so we make no claim about which one gets through more often on any particular site. Crawlbase publishes a success-rate figure for its Crawling API, and we have published a benchmark of our own API. Neither is a head-to-head test.
- Which tier and token your sites need on Crawlbase. The
X-Domain-Complexityheader and Crawlbase’s Scraping Cookbook, which lists per-site prices in credits, can help. Its documentation names three complexity values while the pricing page lists eight tiers; we have not verified how they map. - How a mixed month is billed. The pricing page applies multipliers to “a group’s ladder total”. We did not find how requests are grouped when a month mixes tiers and request types, or whether overage brackets count requests or credits.
- Speed. We have not measured Crawlbase’s response times.
- Taxes and custom terms. Crawlbase’s pricing page does not say whether VAT or sales tax is added, and we do not know its custom plan terms.
- Anything that changed after 24 September 2026. Both pricing pages can change at any time.
How to decide in an afternoon
- Pick 50 to 100 URLs that represent your real workload.
- Run them through Crawlbase’s free credits, noting each URL’s
X-Domain-Complexityheader and whether it needed the JavaScript token. 1,000 credits cover 500 rendered standard requests but only 25 at Extreme II. - Run the same URLs through ScrapeUnblocker’s 500 free requests.
- For each service, count the pages you actually received (check the content, not only the status code), then divide the monthly price you would pay by the number of good pages you would get.
The service with the lower cost per good page on your own URLs is the cheaper one for you. You can start with our 500 free requests on the pricing page.
Sources
- Crawlbase pricing: crawlbase.com/pricing, viewed 24 September 2026
- Crawlbase Crawling API product page: crawlbase.com/crawling-api-avoid-captchas-blocks, viewed 24 September 2026
- Crawlbase Crawling API documentation (parameters, billable requests, complexity tiers): crawlbase.com/docs/crawling-api, viewed 24 September 2026
- Crawlbase documentation (rate limits, status codes, SDKs, integrations, MCP server, scrapers): crawlbase.com/docs, viewed 24 September 2026
- Crawlbase Crawling API FAQ: crawlbase.com/faq/crawling-api, viewed 24 September 2026
- Crawlbase Scraping Cookbook: crawlbase.com/cookbook, viewed 24 September 2026
- ScrapeUnblocker pricing: scrapeunblocker.com/pricing
- ScrapeUnblocker errors and billing: docs.scrapeunblocker.com/errors
- ScrapeUnblocker documentation: docs.scrapeunblocker.com
Crawlbase is a trademark of its respective owner. ScrapeUnblocker is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Crawlbase. This article is published by ScrapeUnblocker and reflects information that was publicly available on 24 September 2026. If you believe anything here is inaccurate or out of date, please contact us and we will review and correct it.
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