Best scraping APIs for JavaScript-heavy sites
Single-page apps and sites that load content after the first response need a real browser. Vendors price this as a credit multiplier (for example 5 credits instead of 1), a higher per-request tier, or by the hour of browser time. Here is what each publishes.
Prices checked . Prices only: we have not benchmarked success rate, speed or output quality, so treat this as a cost shortlist, not a verdict.
What this workload needs
- A flag or endpoint that renders JavaScript and waits for content, sometimes with scripted waits or clicks.
- Know the multiplier: a JS request can cost 5 times a plain one on credit-based APIs.
- If you must log in, click or fill forms, an hourly browser service fits better than a per-page API (see browser infrastructure below).
- Firecrawl, Apify and some others do not publish a separate rendering price in our data, so they are not ranked here rather than guessed.
Cost shortlist
- Crawl4AI: about $99.00/month at 100,000 requests (Cloud Builder). Tends to fit: Free, self-hosted crawling for RAG. Watch-out: Self-hosting means you handle browsers, proxies and blocks. MCP: Yes.
- ScrapingBee: about $99.00/month at 100,000 requests (Startup). Tends to fit: Developers wanting simple HTTP scraping with JS rendering. Watch-out: Default JS rendering means 5 credits per request unless you turn it off. MCP: Yes.
- Scrapfly: about $100/month at 100,000 requests (Pro). Tends to fit: Anti-bot-heavy scraping with transparent credit multipliers. Watch-out: Residential/Unblocker requests burn 5-25x the base credits. MCP: Yes.
- Zyte: about $100/month at 100,000 requests ($100/mo commitment - Tier 1 rendered). Tends to fit: Per-site fair pricing where easy sites are very cheap. Watch-out: Cost varies 10x+ by site tier; you must check your target domains. MCP: Yes.
The shortlist is the four lowest published-price estimates at 100,000 requests a month for javascript-rendered page. It is rule-based (cheapest first) and not influenced by affiliate status.
JavaScript-rendered page: estimated monthly cost at example volumes
| Vendor | 10,000 / month | 100,000 / month | 1,000,000 / month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crawl4AI | $10.00 Cloud Starter | $99.00 Cloud Builder | not enough data |
| ScrapingBee | $19.00 Hobby | $99.00 Startup | not enough data |
| Scrapfly | $30.00 Discovery | $100 Pro | $500 Enterprise |
| Zyte | $10.10 Pay as you go - Tier 1 rendered | $100 $100/mo commitment - Tier 1 rendered | $500 $500/mo commitment - Tier 1 rendered |
| ZenRows | $58.00 Launch (annual billing) | $166 Growth (annual billing) | $458 Scale (annual billing) |
| Oxylabs | $30.00 Starter - custom domain JS | $500 Flexible - custom domain JS | not enough data |
No usable published price for this request type: Firecrawl, Apify, Bright Data, ScraperAPI, Browserbase, Tavily, Exa, SerpApi, Jina Reader, Brave Search API, Hyperbrowser, Steel. They are not ranked rather than guessed.
Open the calculator with your own volume to compare all vendors side by side.
Remote browser hour: published rates
| # | Vendor | Plan / rate | Price per hour | Monthly spend needed | Billing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Steel | Scale | $0.08 per hour | $250/mo | payg |
| 2 | Hyperbrowser | All plans | $0.10 per hour | none | payg |
| 3 | Browserbase | Startup (included hours) | $0.198 per hour | $99/mo | monthly |
How to choose
- Check whether the pages you need actually require rendering: fetching the underlying JSON API of a site is far cheaper when available.
- At high volume the multiplier dominates: compare plan allowance divided by the multiplier.
- For multi-step flows, price browser hours (table below) and estimate minutes per task.
Related comparisons
- Scrapfly vs ZenRows
- Zyte vs Scrapfly
- Browserbase vs Hyperbrowser
- ZenRows vs ScrapingBee
- Which tool? (JavaScript-heavy sites section)
Other use-case guides
- RAG and LLM ingestion
- Ecommerce price monitoring
- SERP data
- Anti-bot protected sites
- AI agent web search
- Browser automation for agents
FetchIndex has an affiliate relationship with Firecrawl; it does not change prices, rankings or caveats (disclosure). This page contains no affiliate links.