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Zyte is a hosted scraping stack with flexible access, structured extraction and managed delivery; its listed starting price is $0.06. Alternatives range from Apify’s hosted Actor platform to Firecrawl, which is listed as open source, and managed browser or proxy services. The right replacement depends on your domains and the cost of usable results, not just requests. Reddit users report that JavaScript rendering, retries and domain mix can change the bill, so compare providers on the same URLs and parsed fields.
01Why people leave Zyte
Headline price hides landed cost
Reddit users report that domain, JavaScript rendering, premium proxies and retries can change effective cost. Compare successful records per dollar, not request prices alone.
The target mix can shift
One Reddit thread describes Amazon, Walmart and smaller retailers behaving differently on price and performance. Recheck costs when domains or monthly volume change.
HTTP 200 is not success
Reddit commenters warn that a response can contain a challenge page or an empty product field. Validate parsed output against your required fields.
02The alternatives, ranked by fit
- Custom scraping workflows
ApifyApifyApify is a hosted Actor platform for ready-made scrapers and custom Actors, making it a fit when you want to own more of the collection workflow than a managed delivery stack allows. It starts at $19 and has a free plan; usage costs and concurrency limits need planning. Check those limits against your workload, then map your existing jobs and outputs to Actors before migrating.
Trade-off: Usage costs and concurrency limits need modeling.
7.7/10from
$19/mofree plan - Open-source web extraction
FirecrawlFirecrawlFirecrawl is an API for turning live pages into Markdown or JSON, with an open-source listing. It starts at $16 and has a free plan. That output format can suit agent pipelines that do not need Zyte’s managed collection and delivery. Before moving production traffic, confirm the current license and deployment options, then adapt your consumers to the new output format.
Trade-off: Check license and deployment terms before relying on self-hosting.
7.4/10from
$16/mofree plan - Managed proxy infrastructure
Bright DataBright DataBright Data is a full web-data stack for teams that want managed proxy infrastructure alongside collection. It has a free plan and starts at $0, but that entry price does not establish what your workload will cost. Use the same domains, fields and success criteria in a comparison, and account for the operational change of moving traffic and logs to another provider.
Trade-off: Budget for usage and managed infrastructure.
7.0/10from
$499/mofree plan - Managed API and proxies
OxylabsOxylabsOxylabs combines hosted APIs and proxy infrastructure, with a focus that includes web-grounded AI agents and enterprise collection. It starts at $15 and has a free plan. A Reddit commenter recommends its E-Commerce Scraper API for Amazon-specific parsing, but reports that pay-as-you-go is no longer available. Check current pricing against your domain mix before migrating.
Trade-off: A Reddit commenter reports pay-as-you-go is no longer available.
6.8/10from
$15/mofree plan - Interactive browser access
BrowserbaseBrowserbaseBrowserbase is a hosted browser stack for agents, with interactive browser access and Search and Fetch options. It may fit workflows that need browser interaction rather than a scraping-and-delivery stack. A free plan is listed, but no starting paid price is shown. Review the APIs against your current flow and estimate usage before moving production jobs.
Trade-off: The paid starting price is not listed.
7.0/10from
Freefree plan - Local-business data pulls
OutscraperOutscraperOutscraper is a hosted data source for local-business collection, with pay-as-you-go pricing and CSV-first workflows. It starts at $1 and has a free plan, which may suit small, bounded pulls better than a broader managed scraping stack. It is not presented as a general replacement for varied website types; check that your target data and required output fit its scope.
Trade-off: Its listed fit is local-business data, not broad scraping.
6.8/10from
$1/mofree plan
03Side by side
| Tool | Score | From | Free plan | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Zyte Zyte (current) | 7.7 | $0.06/mo | No | Teams scraping varied website types |
| Apify Apify | 7.7 | $19/mo | Yes | Teams needing ready-made web scrapers |
| Firecrawl Firecrawl | 7.4 | $16/mo | Yes | AI agents that need live web data |
| Bright Data Bright Data | 7.0 | $499/mo | Yes | Teams collecting public-web data at scale |
| Oxylabs Oxylabs | 6.8 | $15/mo | Yes | Teams building web-grounded AI agents |
| Browserbase Browserbase | 7.0 | Free | Yes | Agents that need interactive browser access |
| Outscraper Outscraper | 6.8 | $1/mo | Yes | Local-business data collection |
Questions people ask
Which Zyte alternative is cheapest?
There is no single cheapest choice for every domain or workload. The listed starting prices range from $0 for Bright Data to $19 for Apify, but those figures do not establish cost for your pages. Compare providers using the same URL basket and calculate cost per successful, correctly parsed record, including retries and rendering.
Which Zyte alternative is open source?
Firecrawl is listed as open source and provides an API that turns live web pages into Markdown or JSON. Confirm its current license and deployment options before treating it as a self-hosted replacement. An open-source label alone does not tell you whether its terms and operating model fit your codebase.
What should we test before replacing Zyte?
Run the same URLs through the candidates and validate the fields your product consumes, not just HTTP status codes. Include each target domain, JavaScript-heavy pages and expected retries in the comparison. Track successful records per dollar and note which provider holds traffic logs, so you can explain the decision and revisit it when volume changes.