How Much Does Web Scraping Cost? — Complete Answer

Web scraping costs range from free (self-hosted tools) to thousands per month for enterprise-scale operations. The actual price depends on volume, complexity, proxy quality, and whether you use a managed API or build it yourself. This guide breaks down real pricing from every major provider so you can budget accurately.

Key Takeaways

• Managed scraping APIs cost $0.0001 to $0.01 per page depending on the provider and features
• Self-hosted scraping is free on software, but proxy infrastructure costs $50-500+/month
• JavaScript rendering and premium proxies multiply costs by 5-25x per request
• SearchHive offers the lowest entry point at $9/month for 5,000 credits with scraping included
• Most developers underestimate total cost by 3-5x because they forget about proxies, retries, and maintenance

How much do managed scraping APIs cost?

Managed APIs handle the infrastructure for you -- proxies, headless browsers, CAPTCHAs, and rate limiting. Here is what the major providers charge:

Why do prices vary so much between providers?

The main cost drivers are:

1. JavaScript rendering. Static HTML pages are cheap to scrape. Pages that need a real browser (React, Angular, Vue apps) cost 5x more in compute. ScrapingBee charges 5 credits for JS rendering vs 1 credit for static. ScrapeGraphAI charges 10 credits for SmartScraper (AI extraction) vs 2 credits for basic Markdownify.

2. Proxy quality. Residential proxies cost 10-25x more than datacenter proxies. ScrapingBee charges 10-25 credits for premium proxies vs 1 credit for standard. This matters for sites with aggressive anti-bot protection (Amazon, LinkedIn, Google).

3. AI extraction. Services that use LLMs to structure your data (ScrapeGraphAI SmartScraper, Firecrawl's structured extraction) charge significantly more per page because they incur inference costs.

4. Geo-targeting. Scraping from specific countries requires premium proxy networks. Most providers charge extra or only offer it on higher plans.

How much does self-hosted scraping cost?

If you build your own scraping stack, software is free (Playwright, Puppeteer, Scrapy, BeautifulSoup), but you still pay for:

• Proxies: Residential proxies run $5-15/GB. A typical scraping project uses 1-5 GB/month for small volumes, scaling to 50-500 GB/month at enterprise scale. Expect $50-500+/month.
• Servers: Headless browsers need real machines. A cloud VM with 4+ GB RAM costs $20-80/month. Running 10+ concurrent browsers pushes this to $200+/month.
• CAPTCHA solving: Services like 2Captcha or Anti-Captcha charge $1-3 per 1,000 CAPTCHAs. At scale with aggressive sites, this adds $10-100/month.
• Maintenance: Engineering time to handle blocked IPs, broken selectors, site changes, and infrastructure failures. This is the hidden cost -- figure 10-20 hours/month for a mid-complexity project.

Realistic self-hosted cost for a project scraping 50K pages/month: $100-300/month in infrastructure, plus $500-2,000/month in engineering time.

What is the cheapest way to scrape websites?

For most developers, a managed API is cheaper than self-hosted when you factor in engineering time. Here is the math:

Option A: Self-hosted (50K pages/month)

• Proxy costs: $100/month
• Server costs: $60/month
• CAPTCHA solving: $30/month
• Engineering time: $1,000/month (10 hrs at $100/hr)
• Total: ~$1,190/month

Option B: SearchHive (50K pages/month)

• Builder plan: $49/month (100K credits -- covers 50K pages with room for retries)
• Engineering time: $100/month (1 hr integration)
• Total: ~$149/month

Option C: ScrapingBee (50K pages/month)

• Startup plan: $99/month (1M credits, but JS rendering costs 5x)
• If 30% of pages need JS: 50K * 0.7 * 1 + 50K * 0.3 * 5 = 110K credits. Well within 1M limit.
• Engineering time: $100/month
• Total: ~$199/month

Managed APIs win decisively for anything beyond toy projects.

How does SearchHive pricing compare for scraping?

SearchHive uses a universal credit system where 1 credit = $0.0001. Scraping via ScrapeForge consumes credits based on page complexity, but the rates are competitive:

• Basic pages: 1-5 credits per page
• JS-rendered pages: 5-15 credits per page
• Complex pages with anti-bot: 10-25 credits per page

On the $49/month Builder plan (100K credits), you can scrape approximately 10,000-50,000 pages depending on complexity. That works out to $0.001-0.005 per page.

Compare that to Firecrawl at $0.83/1K pages ($83/100K on Standard) or ScrapeGraphAI at $2.13/page for AI-powered extraction. SearchHive is 5-20x cheaper for equivalent scraping workloads. /compare/firecrawl

What about hidden costs?

Watch out for these:

• Overage charges. Some providers charge punitive rates for exceeding your plan. Always check the per-extra-credit price before committing.
• Data retention fees. Enterprise plans on some providers charge for storing your scraped data.
• Minimum commitments. Enterprise contracts often require 12-month commitments.
• API latency. Cheaper providers sometimes have slower response times. For real-time applications, latency matters more than per-page cost.

How do I estimate scraping costs for my project?

Use this formula:

Monthly cost = (Pages per month x Avg credits per page x Cost per credit) + Plan fee

Example: 100K pages/month, 3 avg credits/page, SearchHive Builder plan ($49):

• Credits needed: 100K x 3 = 300K credits
• That exceeds 100K plan, so upgrade to Unicorn ($199 for 500K credits)
• Cost: $199/month

Start scraping with SearchHive

The fastest way to test is the free tier -- 500 credits, no credit card, full API access. Sign up, grab your API key, and make your first scrape call in under 2 minutes. If you need help choosing a plan, check our web scraping API comparison for a detailed breakdown.