Best web scraping API for article extraction
Default pickFirecrawl
For pulling clean article text from news sites and blogs, Firecrawl is the strongest default: direct markdown and JSON output with schema extraction, priced at $0.83 per 1000 requests on its Standard plan. When articles sit behind heavy anti-bot protection, Bright Data's Web Unlocker at $1.50 per 1000 requests had the highest independently-reported success rate; Zyte API adds AI-driven automatic extraction to structured data. A light estimate from public benchmarks and pricing, August 2026.
DefaultFirecrawlprijsFirecrawlunblockingWeb Unlocker
Provider offerings
| Offering | Price ($/1000 requests) | Success | Capabilities |
|---|---|---|---|
| Web UnlockerBright Data | 1.5 | 98.44% | — |
| Zyte APIZyte | 1* | 93.14% | LLM-readybrowser |
| FirecrawlFirecrawl | 0.83 | 69% | LLM-readybrowser |
| ScrapingBeeScrapingBee | 0.099* | — | LLM-ready |
| ScraperAPIScraperAPI | 0.149* | 68.95% | — |
| Apify (Web Scraping platform)Apify | 0.5* | — | LLM-readybrowser |
| BrowserbaseBrowserbase | 0.05* | — | browser |
* token-/credit-priced — the headline understates real per-unit cost, so it is excluded from the cheapest ranking.
Sources
- Bright Data — Web Unlocker pricing2026-08-20
- Zyte API pricing — Zyte documentation2026-06-22
- Firecrawl pricing2026-08-20
- ScrapingBee pricing2026-08-20
- ScrapingBee — Credit system explained (knowledge base)2026-08-20
- ScraperAPI pricing2026-06-22
- Apify pricing2026-08-20
- Apify Store (Actor count)2026-08-20
- Browserbase — Plans and Pricing (docs)2026-08-20
- Proxyway — Web Scraping API Report 2025 (independent benchmark, 15 protected sites, tested October 2025)2026-08-20
- Scrapeway — ScrapingBee vs Firecrawl benchmark (run 8-14 Aug 2026)2026-08-20
- ScrapeCreators — Best Web Scraping APIs 2026 (aggregator, updated 31 May 2026)2026-08-20