Every vendor climbs. We climb and remember.
What each one does, before what each one costs.
Only what the pricing study established from each vendor’s public pages. A dash is “not checked”, never “no”.
| MeshArc | Firecrawl | ZenRows | ScrapingBee | Scrapfly | Zyte | Spider | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A refused page is not billed | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| A 404 is not billed | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | — | — | — |
| Cheapest-first escalation, chosen for you | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| A cost ceiling you set per request | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | — |
| What a call cost, in the response | ✓ | ✓ | — | ✓ | — | — | — |
| A walled site’s session replayed at a lower price | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Which rung a site needs, remembered across runs | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Change detection per page | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Whole-site change reports, removals confirmed | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Sitemaps kept, diffed, selectable by section | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Push destinations included | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| MCP server | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — |
✓ yes · ✗ no · — not checked. Vendors’ pricing pages and docs, 16–17 September 2026. Tell us where this is wrong and it will be corrected: [email protected].
The same page, at each vendor's mid plan.
“A walled site” is a Cloudflare- or Imperva-protected site read after the browser has earned its cookies once: our session rung replays them over plain http at 2 credits, where the other vendors charge the configuration that worked again on every page. Zyte does not let you choose a tier; its system grades the site and charges the grade.
| vendor · plan | plain http | rendered | residential + render | a walled site | a refused page | a 404 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MeshArcGrowth $99 | $0.20 | $0.79 | $3.17 | $0.40 | 0 | 0 |
| MeshArcScale $349 | $0.14 | $0.56 | $2.23 | $0.28 | 0 | 0 |
| FirecrawlStandard $83 | $0.83 | $0.83 | $0.83 | $0.83 | 1 credit | 1 credit |
| ZenRowsGrowth $165 | $0.14 | $0.69 | $3.44 | $3.44 | 0 | 1 credit |
| ScrapingBeeStartup $99 | $0.10 | $0.49 | $2.48 | $2.48–7.43 | 0 | 1 credit |
| ScrapflyPro $100 | $0.10 | $0.60 | $3.00 | $3.00 | 0 | — |
| ScraperAPIStartup $149 | $0.15 | $1.49 | $3.72 | $3.72 | 0 | — |
| Zytepay-as-you-go, tier 1 / 3 | $0.13 / 0.44 | $1.01 / 4.02 | in the tier | the tier, every page | 0 | — |
| Bright DataUnlocker, pay-as-you-go | $1.50 | $1.50 | $1.50 | $1.50 | 0 | — |
Read from each vendor’s pricing page, 16–17 September 2026. Vendor prices change; treat this as a snapshot. MeshArc: Growth is $0.198 per 1,000 credits, Scale $0.14; a residential render includes 1 MB and adds 4 credits per started megabyte past it.
The number to take away is the walled site. A hundred Cloudflare pages are 202 credits here — one render, then the session at 2 — against 2,500 to 7,500 credits where the winning configuration is paid again for every page. That is structural, not a price setting: nobody else keeps the session.
We are not the cheapest plain fetch, and do not claim to be. A credit here arrives with the diff, the sitemap and the destination.
- Fetch$0.20$0.14
- Fetch with session$0.40$0.28
- Render$0.79$0.56
- Render, residential$3.17$2.23
- Render, solved$4.36$3.07
- Unlocked$7.92$5.58
What is ours, what is everyone's, and where the bill is smaller.
- ScrapingBee's Auto-Mode with max_cost is the same idea.
- The norm at ScrapingBee, ZenRows, Scrapfly, Zyte, Bright Data and Crawlbase.
- ScrapingBee returns Spb-auto-cost.
- scrape / batch / crawl / map
- markdown, text, rawHtml, cleanHtml, links, screenshot, json
- JS rendering and browser steps
- Datacenter and residential proxies
- A captcha rung
- Cache with maxAge
- Webhooks, HMAC-signed
- Keys with scopes and rate limits
- Python and Node SDKs, MCP server
- Credits and Razorpay billing
One rival at a time.
Where a comparison deserves more than a row in a table, it has a page.
Run the same site here and there.
A one-time 1,000 credits, browser tier included, no card. The response says the mode it took and what it cost.