Zyte API alternatives: 9 tools compared (October 2026)

Firecrawl is a web data API for developers who feed websites into AI applications. It scrapes, crawls, searches and maps sites and returns Markdown, HTML, screenshots or structured JSON.

Key functions

• Extracts structured data that matches a JSON schema you pass to the scrape endpoint
• Interact endpoint operates pages through natural-language instructions
• Returns clean Markdown prepared as input for language models

Compared with Zyte API

• Has a free plan; Zyte API does not.
• Different pricing model: freemium instead of usage-based.
• Strongest elsewhere: United States.

Check before buying: Check whether scraping the target sites is allowed by their terms and applicable law; Firecrawl respects robots.txt by default, but that does not settle the legal question. The hosted service stores data in the United States; zero data retention and SSO are limited to Enterprise. Estimate credit use per page type before choosing a plan, and note that AGPL-3.0 has obligations if you modify and offer the code as a service.

HARPA AI is a browser extension that brings AI chat and web automation into Chrome and other browsers. It summarizes pages and videos, extracts data, monitors websites and runs reusable commands, which suits research, marketing and sales work in small teams.

Key functions

• Summarizes web pages, YouTube videos and PDFs
• Extracts data from websites and monitors pages for changes
• Reusable AI commands and scheduled automations

Compared with Zyte API

• Has a free plan; Zyte API does not.
• Can store data in the EU; Zyte API states no EU option.
• Different pricing model: freemium instead of usage-based.

Check before buying: Automated scraping and page actions must respect the terms of the target websites. Data is processed on servers in the US and Germany; clarify which applies to your account. The privacy policy does not mention a data processing agreement, so request one, and ask for the ISO 27001 certificate if you require it. Token allowances run out faster with long outputs, since output tokens count three times.

Scrapfly is a web scraping platform from a US based, bootstrapped vendor. Developers and data teams use one API key for a scraping API, cloud browser, screenshot API, crawler and an extraction API that uses LLM prompts and AI models to return structured data.

Key functions

• Extraction API pulls data from HTML by LLM prompt
• Pre-trained AI models for products, articles and reviews
• MCP server connects AI assistants to scraping and extraction

Compared with Zyte API

• Has a free plan; Zyte API does not.
• Names 3 security certificates, Zyte API 1.
• Strongest elsewhere: United States.

Check before buying: Scraping legality depends on the target site's terms, copyright, database rights and any personal data on the pages, so get legal advice before large jobs. The vendor's Unblocker is built to bypass anti-bot systems, and its terms forbid uses such as card testing and credential cracking. The privacy policy states processing occurs in the United States, and no EU region is listed.

ScrapingBee is a web scraping API from a French company. Developers send a URL and receive page content, rendered in headless Chrome with rotating proxies, or structured data extracted by CSS selectors or AI, without running their own scraping infrastructure.

Key functions

• AI extraction: describe the data in plain English (ai_query) or define fields with ai_extract_rules and receive structured JSON
• MCP server and CLI that let AI assistants such as Claude, ChatGPT, Codex or Cursor call the scraper
• Dedicated ChatGPT and Gemini APIs that return AI answers with citations as JSON, Markdown or plain text

Compared with Zyte API

• Can store data in the EU; Zyte API states no EU option.
• Strongest elsewhere: France.

Check before buying: Check scraping rules yourself: respect each site's terms and avoid personal data unless GDPR, supervised in France by the CNIL, or US state privacy laws give you a legal basis. ScrapingBee acts as processor, its DPA applies once an account is activated, and Standard Contractual Clauses cover US sub-processors. Request logs are kept for 14 days without response content. Estimate credit use early, because rendering, premium proxies and AI extraction raise the cost per request.

Diffbot offers APIs that turn web pages into structured JSON without site-specific rules, together with a Knowledge Graph, web search and a natural language API for data and research teams.

Key functions

• Classifies pages by type and extracts standard fields such as price or author with pretrained models
• Natural Language API processes documents for entities and relations
• Knowledge Graph built from Diffbot's own web crawl with entity linking

Compared with Zyte API

• Has a free plan; Zyte API does not.
• Different pricing model: freemium instead of usage-based.
• Strongest elsewhere: United States.

Check before buying: Diffbot processes data in its own California data center; a public DPA, subprocessor list or certification was not found on the pages checked in September 2026, so request them. Knowledge Graph exports cost 25 credits per entity, which adds up quickly. If the Knowledge Graph holds data on people, check your legal basis before using it for sales outreach.

Jina Reader turns any URL into text that language models can use: prefix a link with r.jina.ai and get clean Markdown, or query s.jina.ai to get search results as Markdown.

Key functions

• ReaderLM-v2 converts HTML into Markdown or JSON
• Vision-language model captions images on pages
• s.jina.ai returns the top five search results as Markdown

Compared with Zyte API

• Has a free plan; Zyte API does not.
• Strongest elsewhere: Germany.

Check before buying: Since the Elastic acquisition, the Elastic Customer DPA governs data processing; the Jina legal page links it. The Reader page does not state where data is hosted, so ask for hosting details. The ReaderLM-v2 model is licensed for non-commercial use only; commercial self-hosting needs a license from Elastic. Paid tiers bill by tokens, and each search costs at least 10,000 tokens.

Octoparse is point-and-click scraping software for teams without developers. It detects data on pages, offers templates for common sites and runs extraction locally or in the cloud.

Key functions

• Auto-detect recognizes data on a page and drafts the extraction workflow
• Through the Octoparse MCP server, AI assistants such as Claude or ChatGPT search templates, create tasks and export data from natural-language instructions
• The Field Fixer AI assistant checks a task's data fields and pagination and fixes them on request

Compared with Zyte API

• Has a free plan; Zyte API does not.
• Different pricing model: freemium instead of usage-based.
• Strongest elsewhere: United States.

Check before buying: The privacy policy does not state where data is stored, and a DPA or certification was not found in September 2026; ask before running cloud extraction on sensitive data. The tool offers features for bypassing CAPTCHAs and bot protection: automatic CAPTCHA solving, which Octoparse itself calls CAPTCHA bypass, IP rotation and residential proxies. Using them can breach the target sites' terms of use and is legally risky in Germany, for example under Section 202a of the German Criminal Code (StGB) or database rights. Have their use legally reviewed before deployment. Extra services are billed separately from the plan.

ScrapeGraphAI is an open-source Python library that uses language models and graph-based pipelines to extract data from websites and local documents. You state what you need in plain language.

Key functions

• SmartScraperGraph extracts information from a page based on a natural-language prompt
• Works on websites and local XML, HTML, JSON and Markdown files
• Integrations with LangChain, LlamaIndex, CrewAI and an MCP server

Compared with Zyte API

• Has a free plan; Zyte API does not.
• Strongest elsewhere: United States.

Check before buying: Each extraction calls a language model, so costs and data flows depend on the model provider you choose; with a cloud model, page content leaves your systems. LLM extraction can return wrong or missing fields, so validate samples before relying on the output. Self-hosting means your team maintains the library and Playwright. The separately sold managed API offers features for bypassing bot protection, with stealth rendering and anti-bot handling included. Using them can breach the target sites' terms of use and is legally risky in Germany, for example under Section 202a of the German Criminal Code (StGB) or database rights. Have their use legally reviewed before deployment.