ScrapeUnblocker vs. Scrapfly: Credits, Billing and Features Compared (2026)
ScrapeUnblocker and Scrapfly’s Web Scraping API solve the same core problem: you send a URL to an API, and it returns the page, with proxies, browser rendering and bot protection handled for you. Where they differ most is in how they charge. Scrapfly sells monthly pools of API credits, and a page request on its datacenter or residential proxies costs 1, 6, 25 or 30 credits, depending on the pool and on whether a browser is used, before extras such as AI extraction. 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 Scrapfly figure below comes from Scrapfly’s own public pricing page 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.
Scrapfly is also a broader platform: one credit balance covers five APIs (Web Scraping, Cloud Browser, Screenshot, Extraction and Crawler). We compare ScrapeUnblocker with the Web Scraping API, the product closest to ours.
At a glance
| ScrapeUnblocker | Scrapfly Web Scraping API | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | 1 request = 1 credit | 1 credit (datacenter) or 25 (residential), +5 for browser rendering |
| JavaScript rendering | Always on, included in the request | Optional (render_js=true), +5 credits |
| Entry price | Pay as you go at €1.00 per 1,000 requests; monthly plans from €29 | Monthly plans from $30 |
| Largest self-serve plan | €1,000 per month (Ultimate) | $500 per month (Enterprise) |
| Free usage | 500 requests, no card needed | 1,000 API credits, no credit card, no time limit |
| Throughput limit | 2 to 10 requests per second on Pay as you go, Starter and Pro; up to 400 on Business, Scale and Ultimate | 5 to 100 concurrent requests, by plan |
| Currency | EUR | USD |
How Scrapfly pricing works
Scrapfly’s pricing page lists a free tier, four monthly plans and a Custom option:
| Plan | Price per month | API credits per month | Listed price per 1,000 credits | Extra credits | Concurrent requests |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Discovery | $30 | 200,000 | $0.15 | No pay-as-you-go | 5 |
| Pro | $100 | 1,000,000 | $0.10 | $3.50 per 10,000 | 20 |
| Startup | $250 | 2,500,000 | $0.10 | $2.00 per 10,000 | 50 |
| Enterprise | $500 | 5,500,000 | $0.09 | $1.20 per 10,000 | 100 |
According to the page, every plan includes all five APIs, the Unblocker, 190+ countries, JavaScript rendering and residential proxies, and Custom contracts start at $1.2k per month. Unused credits do not roll over. At the end of the quota, Discovery stops at its cap, while the other plans switch to pay-as-you-go at the rate in the table, capped by default at 50% of the monthly quota according to the billing documentation.
The pricing page summarizes credit costs (1 credit for an HTTP scrape on a datacenter IP, 5 for ”+ JS rendering or Unblocker”, 25 for ”+ residential proxies”) and refers to the documentation for the full matrix. The Web Scraping API billing documentation itemizes it like this:
| Configuration | Credits per request |
|---|---|
| Datacenter proxy (the default) | 1 |
Datacenter proxy with browser rendering (render_js=true) | 1 + 5 = 6 |
Residential proxy (proxy_pool=public_residential_pool) | 25 |
| Residential proxy with browser rendering | 25 + 5 = 30 |
Three more rules come from the documentation. The Unblocker (unblocker=true, formerly ASP) adds “no extra cost” on non-protected traffic, but on protected sites it may upgrade the proxy pool or turn on the browser, and some specific targets have fees that “are not publicly documented”; a cost_budget parameter caps the cost of a request. AI extraction adds 5 credits (1 for a template). And HTML responses over 1MB (3MB with browser rendering) are billed for extra bandwidth, at 3 credits per 100KB on datacenter proxies and 10 on residential.
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 (not the same thing as Scrapfly’s $500 Enterprise plan). 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.
What each plan buys, in requests
The table divides each Scrapfly plan’s credits by the documented credit costs. It is plain arithmetic and assumes the same configuration for every request, with no Unblocker adjustments, extraction or bandwidth charges. ScrapeUnblocker always renders in a browser, so the closest Scrapfly configurations are the two with ”+ browser”.
| Scrapfly plan | Datacenter (1 credit) | Datacenter + browser (6) | Residential (25) | Residential + browser (30) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Discovery, $30 | 200,000 | 33,333 | 8,000 | 6,666 |
| Pro, $100 | 1,000,000 | 166,666 | 40,000 | 33,333 |
| Startup, $250 | 2,500,000 | 416,666 | 100,000 | 83,333 |
| Enterprise, $500 | 5,500,000 | 916,666 | 220,000 | 183,333 |
With the pricing page’s summary figure of 5 credits instead of 6, the second column is 20% higher. On ScrapeUnblocker, the number is fixed per plan whatever the site: 34,000 requests on Starter, 132,000 on Pro, and so on.
One price point side by side
Scrapfly prices in US dollars and ScrapeUnblocker in euros. We have not converted between them, because exchange rates move.
| Plan and configuration | Requests per month | Price per 1,000 requests |
|---|---|---|
| ScrapeUnblocker Pro (€99) | 132,000 | about €0.75 |
| Scrapfly Pro ($100), datacenter | 1,000,000 | $0.10 |
| Scrapfly Pro ($100), datacenter + browser | 166,666 | about $0.60 |
| Scrapfly Pro ($100), residential | 40,000 | $2.50 |
| Scrapfly Pro ($100), residential + browser | 33,333 | about $3.00 |
How to read these numbers
Here is the honest reading. If your target sites work on Scrapfly’s datacenter proxies without browser rendering, Scrapfly’s plans cover many more requests for a similar nominal monthly amount than ours do. With browser rendering on datacenter proxies, Scrapfly works out to about $0.55 to $0.90 per 1,000 requests across its four plans, against €0.55 to €1.00 on ScrapeUnblocker; those figures are close, so the exchange rate and the plan you choose decide which is lower. If your targets need residential proxies, each request draws 25 or 30 credits, about $2.27 to $4.50 per 1,000 depending on the plan. On protected sites, the Unblocker adjusts the configuration to the target, so the cost there is something you find out by testing.
What we cannot tell you is which configuration your sites need on Scrapfly. That decides most of the price difference, and only a test on your own URLs will show it (see the end of this article).
What you pay for when a request fails
Both services say they do not charge for failed requests, but the details differ.
Scrapfly. Its pricing page describes “upstream 4xx/5xx and failed scrapes” as free. The billing documentation gives the detail: its Scrape Failed Protection “ensures that failed scrapes are not billed”, and status codes of 400 and above are eligible unless they are on an excluded list of 22 codes, which includes 404 and 410. Under a fairness policy, if more than 30% of failed traffic with eligible status codes is detected within at least one hour, “the fairness policy will be disabled and usage will be billed”. Its error catalog marks each error code with a billed value, quoted below.
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 | Scrapfly (per its documentation) |
|---|---|---|
| Target answers 404 or 410 | Billed (200 with X-Origin-Status) | On the list excluded from Scrape Failed Protection |
| Target’s origin returns its own 5xx page | Billed (200 with X-Origin-Status) | Eligible for Scrape Failed Protection, subject to the fairness policy |
| Blocked by bot protection | Not billed (403) | ERR::ASP::SHIELD_PROTECTION_FAILED: billed: false |
| Domain does not resolve | Billed (400) | ERR::SCRAPE::DNS_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED: billed: true |
| Browser action fails | Billed (422 step_failed) | ERR::SCRAPE::SCENARIO_EXECUTION: billed: true |
| Timeout | Not billed | ERR::SCRAPE::OPERATION_TIMEOUT: billed: false; ERR::SCRAPE::UPSTREAM_TIMEOUT (target too slow): billed: true |
| Rate or concurrency limit, or quota reached | Not billed (429, 402) | TOO_MANY_CONCURRENT_REQUEST and QUOTA_LIMIT_REACHED: billed: false |
| Error on the provider’s side | Not billed | ERR::API::INTERNAL_ERROR: billed: false |
One caveat applies to both. Each service decides for itself whether a response counts as a failure. If a challenge page comes back looking like a normal page, whether it is caught depends on that service’s own checks. We have not tested how Scrapfly handles this.
Features compared
| Feature | ScrapeUnblocker | Scrapfly |
|---|---|---|
| JavaScript rendering | Always on, in a real browser | render_js=true, on a cloud browser instance |
| Geotargeting | proxy_country, with a published list of supported countries | country (ISO code), with multiple countries, exclusions and weights; 190+ countries listed |
| Output | HTML, or structured JSON with parsed_data=true | JSON envelope or the page directly; format can be raw, clean HTML, JSON, Markdown or text |
| Structured data | parsed_data=true (Schema.org, __NEXT_DATA__ or AI-generated rules) | Extraction templates, LLM prompts and AI models by page type (product, article, job posting and others) |
| Page interaction | steps: click, type, select, press keys, scroll and wait, up to about 10 steps, plus list_elements | js_scenario: click, fill, select, scroll, wait, conditions and custom JavaScript, within a 25-second budget |
| Screenshots | Not offered | Up to 10 per scrape, plus a Screenshot API (60 credits each) |
| Custom request headers | Not offered | headers parameter |
| Sessions | get_cookies=true returns the cookies and the proxy address used | session keeps cookies, fingerprint and proxy; expires after seven days without use |
| Asynchronous requests | Not offered | Webhooks (webhook_name) |
| Maximum request time | 60 seconds (90 seconds with steps) | timeout up to 150 seconds |
| Google search | /serpApi: organic results, ads and Google’s AI overview as JSON | No dedicated endpoint found in its documentation; extraction models include search_engine_results |
| Site-specific endpoints | Plugins returning JSON, for example Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Target, Etsy, Indeed, TikTok, Booking.com, Airbnb and Skyscanner | Extraction models by page type, such as product or review_list |
| Client libraries | Python, Node.js, Ruby and PHP | Python, TypeScript, Go and Rust, plus Scrapy and a CLI |
| Integrations | MCP server, Claude Code plugin, Scrapy middleware, n8n node, Apify actors | MCP server, agent skills, Zapier, Make, n8n, LlamaIndex, LangChain, CrewAI |
On rate limits: Scrapfly limits requests in flight at once, ScrapeUnblocker limits requests per second. These units cannot be compared directly, because the throughput a concurrency limit gives depends on how long each request takes.
When Scrapfly may be the better fit
- Most of your targets work on Scrapfly’s datacenter proxies without browser rendering, where a request costs 1 credit.
- You need screenshots, Markdown or text output, custom request headers, webhooks, or requests longer than 60 seconds.
- You want a remote browser for Playwright, Puppeteer or Selenium, a site crawler or a standalone extraction API on the same key and credit balance.
- You work in Go or Rust, or use its Zapier or Make integrations.
- You need the compliance items its pricing page lists (SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, HIPAA, GDPR).
- You already have a working Scrapfly setup that meets your needs.
When ScrapeUnblocker may be the better fit
- Many of your targets need residential proxies or bot-protection bypass, and you want the same price per request whatever the site.
- You want to predict your monthly bill from request volume alone, without tracking credit multipliers.
- You want pay-as-you-go with no monthly commitment. Scrapfly’s pricing page lists pay-as-you-go as overflow billing on Pro and above, and we did not find an option without a monthly plan there.
- You want Google results as JSON from a dedicated endpoint, or structured JSON for common sites from ready-made plugins.
- You work in Ruby or PHP and want an official client library.
- You prefer to be billed in euros.
What this comparison does not tell you
- Success rates. We have not run Scrapfly and ScrapeUnblocker against the same set of sites, so we make no claim about which one gets through more often on any particular site. We have published a benchmark of our own API, but it measures ScrapeUnblocker only.
- Which Scrapfly configuration your sites need. This drives most of the price difference. Scrapfly’s documentation adds that the Unblocker’s cost may change when a site introduces new protection.
- How a target’s 404 or 410 is billed in practice. Scrapfly’s pricing page describes upstream 4xx responses as free, while its billing documentation excludes 404 and 410 from Scrape Failed Protection. Its error catalog also has a
fair_usefield next tobilled, and we did not find an explanation of how the two interact. - Speed. We have not measured Scrapfly’s response times.
- Custom terms. We do not know what Scrapfly offers beyond its public pages.
- The rest of Scrapfly’s platform. Cloud Browser, for example, is billed per 30-second block plus bandwidth, a different unit, so we have not compared it.
- 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 Scrapfly’s free credits. The
X-Scrapfly-Api-Costheader shows what each URL cost, andcost_budgetcaps it. The 1,000 free credits cover 166 URLs with browser rendering, or 33 on residential proxies with browser rendering, so use a smaller sample if your sites need residential proxies. - 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
- Scrapfly pricing: scrapfly.io/pricing, viewed 24 September 2026
- Scrapfly machine-readable pricing: scrapfly.io/pricing.md, viewed 24 September 2026
- Scrapfly Web Scraping API billing: scrapfly.io/docs/scrape-api/billing, viewed 24 September 2026
- Scrapfly Web Scraping API errors and error catalog: scrapfly.io/docs/scrape-api/errors, viewed 24 September 2026
- Scrapfly documentation (getting started, Unblocker, JavaScript rendering and scenarios, screenshots, sessions, webhooks, proxies, timeouts, extraction, Cloud Browser billing, SDKs, integrations): scrapfly.io/docs, viewed 24 September 2026
- ScrapeUnblocker pricing: scrapeunblocker.com/pricing
- ScrapeUnblocker errors and billing: docs.scrapeunblocker.com/errors
- ScrapeUnblocker documentation: docs.scrapeunblocker.com
Scrapfly is a trademark of its respective owner. ScrapeUnblocker is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Scrapfly. 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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