Diffbot Alternatives — 8 Better AI Data Extraction APIs

Diffbot Alternatives: 8 Better AI Data Extraction APIs

Diffbot has been around since 2011 and built its reputation on using computer vision and NLP to turn unstructured web pages into structured data. The technology is impressive, but the pricing model is a problem — $299/month minimum, credit-based billing that's hard to predict, and a Knowledge Graph product that's powerful but overkill for most teams.

If you need AI-powered data extraction without the enterprise price tag, these alternatives deliver comparable or better results.

Key Takeaways

• Diffbot's cheapest paid plan is $299/month — a hard entry point for smaller teams
• Credit-based pricing makes cost prediction difficult (one page = one credit, but bulk exports cost more)
• SearchHive's DeepDive API provides AI extraction for a fraction of Diffbot's cost
• Several alternatives offer per-request pricing that's easier to budget around
• The Knowledge Graph is Diffbot's differentiator, but most teams don't need it

1. SearchHive DeepDive

/compare/searchhive-vs-diffbot

SearchHive's DeepDive API uses AI to understand and extract structured data from any web page. Unlike Diffbot's rigid API types (Article, Product, Discussion), DeepDive lets you define custom extraction schemas or describe what you want in natural language. It returns clean JSON with the exact fields you need.

Pricing: Free tier with 100 requests/month. Pro at $29/month. No credit system — just straightforward per-month billing.

Best for: Teams that want AI extraction without credit-based pricing confusion.

import requests

# Extract structured data using natural language description
resp = requests.post("https://api.searchhive.dev/v1/deepdive",
    headers={"Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"},
    json={
        "url": "https://news.example.com/article/tech-earnings",
        "instruction": "Extract the article title, author, publication date, main companies mentioned, and key financial figures",
        "format": "json"
    }
)

data = resp.json()
print(f"Title: {data['title']}")
print(f"Author: {data['author']}")
print(f"Companies: {', '.join(data['companies'])}")
print(f"Financial figures: {data['key_figures']}")

2. Firecrawl

Firecrawl (by Mendable) converts any URL into clean markdown or structured data. It handles JavaScript rendering, removes boilerplate (navbars, footers, ads), and produces LLM-ready content. The focus is on making web content usable for AI applications — RAG pipelines, training data, and content analysis.

Pricing: Free with 500 credits. Standard at $39/month.

Best for: AI/ML teams building RAG systems or processing web content for LLMs.

3. Jina Reader API

Jina Reader fetches any URL and returns clean, markdown-formatted content. It strips away navigation, ads, and clutter — leaving just the readable content. The API is simple: append the URL to their endpoint, get markdown back.

Pricing: Free for basic use. Premium tiers available.

Best for: Quick content extraction when you need markdown, not structured data.

Limitation: No custom extraction schemas — you get the page content, not specific fields.

4. Apify Content Crawlers

Apify offers dedicated content crawlers that combine web crawling with AI extraction. Their Cheerio and Puppeteer crawlers can extract structured data from thousands of pages, and they integrate with LLMs for intelligent field extraction.

Pricing: Free with $5 credits/month. Paid from $49/month.

Best for: Teams that need to crawl entire sites and extract structured data at scale.

5. ScrapingBee

/compare/scrapingbee-vs-diffbot

ScrapingBee is a web scraping API that handles headless browsers, proxy rotation, and CAPTCHA solving. While not as AI-focused as Diffbot, it gives you raw HTML or extracted text that you can process with your own extraction logic.

Pricing: Free with 1,000 credits. Startup at $49/month.

Best for: Teams that want scraping infrastructure with control over the extraction layer.

6. Tavily Extract

Tavily Extract is part of Tavily's AI search platform. It fetches web pages and returns clean, structured content optimized for LLM consumption. Combined with Tavily's search, you can search and extract in a single workflow.

Pricing: Free with 1,000 requests. Pro at $40/month.

Best for: AI agent builders who need search and extraction in one API.

7. LlamaIndex Web Loader

LlamaIndex provides web document loaders that fetch and parse web content into structured formats. Combined with their LLM integration, you can extract specific information from web pages using natural language queries. Open-source and self-hostable.

Pricing: Free (open source). Cloud version available.

Best for: Teams already using LlamaIndex for RAG or LLM applications.

8. BeautifulSoup + LLM (DIY)

For teams with Python skills, combining BeautifulSoup or Playwright with an LLM (GPT-4, Claude) gives you full control over extraction. You scrape the HTML, pass it to the LLM with a schema definition, and get structured JSON back. Maximum flexibility, zero vendor dependency.

Pricing: LLM API costs only (typically $0.01–0.10 per page).

Best for: Teams with engineering capacity that want complete control and no vendor lock-in.

Comparison Table

Our Recommendation

• Best value: SearchHive. You get AI extraction, web scraping, and SERP search in one platform for $29/month. Diffbot charges $299 for the same capabilities.
• For RAG/LLM apps: Firecrawl or Jina Reader are purpose-built for converting web content to LLM-friendly formats.
• Maximum control: The DIY approach (BeautifulSoup + LLM) gives you full control for the lowest per-page cost, at the expense of engineering time.
• Enterprise scale: Diffbot is worth the price if you actually need the Knowledge Graph's cross-page entity resolution. Most teams don't.

Diffbot's $299 entry point prices out startups, freelancers, and small data teams. SearchHive's DeepDive provides comparable AI extraction with custom schemas for a tenth of the cost. If you're paying for Diffbot credits, the savings from switching are substantial — and the free tier means you can validate the migration before committing.

Get started with SearchHive DeepDive — 100 free extractions per month.