Zyte (Scrapy Cloud) Alternatives — 8 Better Web Scraping Platforms

Zyte Alternatives: 8 Better Web Scraping Platforms

Zyte (formerly Scrapinghub) is built by the team behind Scrapy, which gives it credibility in the Python scraping world. Scrapy Cloud is their managed hosting platform, and Zyte API provides automated data extraction. The Scrapy integration is deep, but Zyte's pricing has shifted toward enterprise territory, with smart proxy management starting at significant minimums and the Scrapy Cloud platform adding costs quickly as you scale.

If you're using Zyte and feeling the pricing pressure, or evaluating scraping platforms for your team, here are the best alternatives.

Key Takeaways

• Zyte's Scrapy Cloud Pro runs $9/unit/month, but costs compound with proxy usage and data extraction API calls
• Zyte Smart Proxy Manager pricing starts high for serious workloads
• SearchHive provides scraping, search, and AI extraction in a single API at $29/month
• Self-hosted Scrapy remains free and avoids vendor lock-in entirely
• The best alternative depends on whether you need managed hosting, proxy infrastructure, or extraction APIs

1. SearchHive

/compare/searchhive-vs-zyte

SearchHive is a web intelligence platform that combines three capabilities Zyte spreads across multiple products: structured web scraping (ScrapeForge), real-time search data (SwiftSearch), and AI-powered extraction (DeepDive). Everything runs through a single REST API with built-in proxy rotation and CAPTCHA handling.

Pricing: Free tier with 100 requests/month. Pro at $29/month.

Best for: Teams that want scraping, search, and AI extraction from one provider without managing Scrapy spiders.

import requests

# Scrape with SearchHive — handles proxies, JS rendering, CAPTCHAs
resp = requests.post("https://api.searchhive.dev/v1/scrape",
    headers={"Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"},
    json={
        "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com",
        "extract": {
            "stories": {
                "selector": ".athing",
                "fields": {
                    "title": ".titleline > a",
                    "rank": ".rank",
                    "points": ".score",
                    "comments": ".subtext a:last-child"
                }
            }
        }
    }
)

for story in resp.json()["stories"]:
    print(f"{story['rank']}. {story['title']} ({story['points']} pts)")

2. Self-Hosted Scrapy

/tutorials/scrapy-self-hosted-setup

Zyte built Scrapy Cloud, but Scrapy itself is open-source and free. Running Scrapy on your own infrastructure — a VPS, Kubernetes cluster, or even a cron job — gives you full control with zero platform costs. You only pay for your server and any proxies you add.

Pricing: Free (open source). Server + proxy costs only.

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

Limitation: You manage deployments, monitoring, retries, and scaling yourself.

3. Apify

/compare/apify-vs-zyte

Apify is the closest alternative to Scrapy Cloud in terms of being a managed scraping platform. It supports Python, Node.js, and offers 1,500+ pre-built scrapers. The platform handles scheduling, storage, proxy rotation, and monitoring — similar to Scrapy Cloud but with more language support and a larger ecosystem.

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

Best for: Teams wanting managed scraping with more language flexibility than Scrapy.

4. ScrapingBee

/compare/scrapingbee-vs-zyte

ScrapingBee provides a simple API for web scraping with headless browser rendering, proxy rotation, and CAPTCHA solving. It's less of a platform and more of a utility API — you send a URL, get HTML back. Simpler than Zyte but enough for many use cases.

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

Best for: Teams that need a scraping API without a full platform.

5. Bright Data

/compare/bright-data-vs-zyte

Bright Data owns the largest residential proxy network in the world. Their scraping solutions — Web Unlocker, Scraping Browser, and SERP API — are built on this infrastructure. For teams that need to scrape at massive scale with minimal blocking, Bright Data is the gold standard.

Pricing: Pay-as-you-go. Typically $500+/month for production workloads.

Best for: Enterprise-scale data collection where anti-bot bypass is critical.

6. Crawlee (Apify's Open-Source Library)

Crawlee is Apify's open-source scraping library for Node.js and Python. It handles browser automation, request queues, proxy rotation, and auto-retries. Think of it as a modern alternative to Scrapy with better TypeScript support and browser pool management.

Pricing: Free (open source). Premium features on Apify Cloud.

Best for: JavaScript/TypeScript teams wanting a modern Scrapy alternative.

7. ScrapFly

ScrapFly provides a web scraping API focused on anti-bot bypass. It renders JavaScript, rotates proxies, and handles CAPTCHAs through a simple API endpoint. The pricing is transparent with per-GB bandwidth billing.

Pricing: Free with 1,000 credits. Growth plan at $35/month.

Best for: Teams focused on scraping JavaScript-heavy sites with anti-bot protection.

8. Colly (Go)

Colly is a Go framework for web scraping. It's fast, concurrent, and lightweight — ideal for teams that already work in Go or need scraping performance that Python can't match. No managed hosting, but excellent for building custom scraping infrastructure.

Pricing: Free (open source).

Best for: Go teams needing high-performance scraping with minimal overhead.

Comparison Table

Our Recommendation

• Most affordable managed option: SearchHive at $29/month gives you scraping with proxy rotation, JS rendering, and CAPTCHA handling included. No per-unit pricing games.
• For existing Scrapy users: Keep Scrapy, just stop paying for Scrapy Cloud. Self-host on a $5-10/month VPS and use a proxy provider separately. The total cost is often lower than Zyte.
• For enterprise scale: Bright Data has the best proxy infrastructure if you need to scrape millions of pages reliably.
• For Node.js teams: Crawlee is the modern alternative to Scrapy — free, well-maintained, and ready to deploy on Apify Cloud.

Zyte's deep Scrapy integration is its moat, but that moat is also a lock-in mechanism. If you're not heavily invested in Scrapy spiders, SearchHive provides the same capabilities (and more) through a language-agnostic REST API at a lower price point. And if you are invested in Scrapy, self-hosting is always cheaper than paying Zyte for the privilege of running your own code.

Start scraping with SearchHive free — no Scrapy required.