Best Oxylabs Alternatives in 2026 (Prices Compared)

The best Oxylabs alternatives in 2026 are Scrape.ly, Bright Data, Decodo, Zyte and ScraperAPI. Scrape.ly is the best Oxylabs alternative for scraping work: residential proxy traffic costs $4 per GB on its free plan and $2 to $3.50 per GB on paid plans, against Oxylabs' $6 per GB on its $30 plan, and it adds 568 ready-made scrapers with a fixed price per result.

The other four are solid tools for narrower jobs, and each section says which one. Every price below was checked on 23 October 2026 on the vendor's own pricing page.

Why teams look for Oxylabs alternatives

Oxylabs sells proxies (residential, mobile, ISP, datacenter), a Web Scraper API, Web Unblocker and an Agent Browser under one subscription. Its pricing page shows why people compare:

• The per-GB price depends on the plan you pay for. Residential traffic costs $6 per GB on Starter ($30 a month, up to 5 GB), $5 on Basic ($100, up to 20 GB) and $4 on Flexible ($500, up to 125 GB). The $2.50 rate needs Enterprise, from $2,500 a month for 1,000 GB and up.
• Limits mean top-ups. When you reach your plan's limit, Oxylabs tells you to contact your account manager or top up in the dashboard.
• Scraper API prices vary by target. Google with JavaScript rendering costs $1.35 per 1,000 results on the entry plans, LLM scrapers such as ChatGPT and Perplexity $1.50, and AI parsing $3 per 1,000 parsed pages.

None of that is unusual for a proxy vendor. It adds up when your volume is small or uneven, or when you'd rather run a ready-made scraper than build requests against an API.

What to look for in an Oxylabs alternative

1. A low per-GB price at your real volume, not only at a terabyte a month.
2. No large plan minimum before the good rates start.
3. Ready-made scrapers for the sites you need, with a published price per result, so you don't parse HTML yourself.
4. A hard spending cap per job, so a runaway loop can't drain the month's budget.
5. A free start that lets you run real jobs before you pay.
6. Agent access over MCP, so Claude, Cursor or ChatGPT can run the same scrapers.

Oxylabs alternatives compared

The sources for every cell are linked in the sections below. Want the head-to-head view? See the full Scrape.ly vs Oxylabs comparison.

1. Scrape.ly: the best Oxylabs alternative for scraping

Scrape.ly is a platform for running scrapers. You can start a ready-made Actor from the Store, push your own scraper code, or let an AI agent do either over MCP. Residential and datacenter proxies are built into every run: each run gets its own credentials, and the traffic is billed per GB as part of that run.

Where it beats Oxylabs:

• Residential traffic for less at every plan level. $4 per GB on Free, $3.50 on Starter ($19 a month), $2.75 on Scale ($199) and $2 on Business ($999). Each paid plan's price is included as usage credit, and extra credit can be added at the same rates. Datacenter traffic is $1 per GB, down to $0.75. All rates are on the proxies page.
• Ready-made scrapers with a price per result. The Amazon Product Scraper charges $0.70 per 1,000 products, the Google Maps Scraper $3.60 per 1,000 places, the Google Maps Reviews Scraper $0.40 per 1,000 reviews and the Website Content Crawler $0.50 per 1,000 pages. You get structured rows, not HTML to parse.
• A maximum charge per run. Set maxTotalChargeUsd and the run stops when it reaches that amount, covering compute, proxy, storage, browser and the Actor's fee. Usage draws from a prepaid US-dollar balance.
• $5 of free usage every month, with no credit card.
• A hosted MCP server at https://api.scrape.ly/mcp, so Claude, Cursor, VS Code or ChatGPT can search the Store, run an Actor and read the results.
• Apify compatibility. Most Apify Actors run unchanged, and apify-client code works after you change the import, base URL and token.
• The Scrapely browser for sites that block headless Chrome: hosted Chromium with anti-bot fingerprints, Cloudflare Turnstile solving and its own residential proxy.

Here is the residential bill on both, at three monthly volumes:

That's $11, $30 and $225 less a month.

What a real run costs: our Amazon Product Scraper run on 22 October 2026 read the Amazon search page for "keyboard" and saved 5 products in 6.1 seconds, charged $0.004583 in total, with compute and proxy included.

Best for: anyone who scrapes rather than resells bandwidth, and anyone whose Oxylabs bill is mostly residential traffic. For the head-to-head detail, see the Scrape.ly vs Oxylabs comparison.

2. Bright Data

Bright Data is the other large proxy network, with scraper APIs and datasets on top. Residential traffic lists at $8 per GB pay as you go, $7 on the $499 plan (141 GB), $6 on the $999 plan (332 GB) and $5 on the $1,999 plan (798 GB). On 23 October the page offered 50% off for the first three months with code RESIGB50. Its Web Scraper API costs $1.50 per 1,000 records pay as you go.

New accounts get 5,000 free credits a month for the APIs; proxies get a one-time $2 trial credit instead. Residential and mobile use starts after a KYC check.

Best for: enterprises that want one vendor for many proxy types and pre-commit to monthly volume. Our Bright Data pricing guide works through the plans, and Bright Data alternatives compares the field.

3. Decodo

Decodo, formerly Smartproxy, sells residential proxies in monthly GB bundles, from $3.75 per GB for 3 GB ($11.25) down to $2 per GB for 1,000 GB ($2,000 a month). Pay as you go costs $4 per GB from a wallet, bought one GB at a time, and you can't combine it with a subscription. A 3-day trial gives 100 MB. Scrape.ly reaches the same $2 rate on its $999 Business plan, half that commitment.

Best for: buying standalone residential bandwidth in fixed monthly bundles. It's a proxy, so the scraper, parsing and storage are yours to build.

4. Zyte

Zyte sells Zyte API, one endpoint that bundles datacenter and residential IPs, rendering and anti-bot handling. It prices each website in one of five tiers. Pay as you go, an HTTP response costs $0.13 to $1.27 per 1,000 and a browser-rendered one $1.01 to $16.08 per 1,000. Monthly commitments of $100, $200 or $500 lower those rates, down to $0.06 per 1,000 for the simplest sites. New accounts get $5 of credit for 30 days.

Best for: teams that write their own extraction and want proxies and rendering behind one API, priced per site tier.

5. ScraperAPI

ScraperAPI bills credits per request. A standard page costs 1 credit, Amazon 5, Google and Bing 25, LinkedIn 30, and sites behind Cloudflare, DataDome or PerimeterX add 10. Hobby costs $49 a month for 100,000 credits, Startup $149 for 1,000,000 and Business $299 for 3,000,000. Unused credits reset at renewal. There is a free plan with 1,000 credits and a 7-day trial with 5,000.

Best for: sending URLs through one endpoint and parsing the HTML yourself, on a fixed monthly credit budget.

How to switch from Oxylabs to Scrape.ly

1. Create an account and a token. Sign up for free, no card. Create an API token under Settings → API & Integrations.

2. Replace Web Scraper API calls with a Store Actor. If you used Oxylabs' API for Amazon, Google or another common site, find the matching Actor in the Store and call it. This is the Amazon search from the run above, in Python:

import os
from scrapely_client import ScrapelyClient

client = ScrapelyClient(os.environ["SCRAPELY_TOKEN"], api_url="https://api.scrape.ly")

run = client.actor("shelfbright/amazon-product-scraper").call(
    run_input={
        "categoryOrProductUrls": [{"url": "https://www.amazon.com/s?k=keyboard"}],
        "maxItemsPerStartUrl": 5,
        "maxSearchPagesPerStartUrl": 1,
        "scrapeProductDetails": False,
    }
)
print(run.status)  # SUCCEEDED, FAILED, ABORTED or TIMED-OUT
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item["title"], item.get("price"), item.get("stars"))

The same run over plain HTTP, since it finishes in about six seconds:

curl -X POST "https://api.scrape.ly/v2/actors/shelfbright~amazon-product-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SCRAPELY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"categoryOrProductUrls": [{"url": "https://www.amazon.com/s?k=keyboard"}], "maxItemsPerStartUrl": 5, "maxSearchPagesPerStartUrl": 1, "scrapeProductDetails": false}'

3. Move your own scrapers and drop the proxy credentials. Push your crawler as an Actor with the CLI, from the scraper's folder:

npm install -g scrapely-cli
export SCRAPELY_API_URL=https://api.scrape.ly
scrapely login
scrapely push

Inside a run, Actor.createProxyConfiguration() gives you the residential pool with no username or password to manage. Pass groups: ['DATACENTER'] for the cheaper pool, and countryCode to pick a country. The proxy docs cover both, and existing code that reads APIFY_PROXY_* variables keeps working.

4. Cap every run. Set a maximum charge per run in the console or the API so each job has a dollar ceiling.

5. Connect your agents. Add https://api.scrape.ly/mcp to Claude Code, Cursor or VS Code and ask in plain words: "Use scrapely to run shelfbright/amazon-product-scraper for keyboards on amazon.com, 5 products, and give me a table of title, price and rating." The MCP page has the setup for each client.

Choosing beyond proxies? The best web scraping tools compares platforms, APIs and libraries.

FAQ

What is the best Oxylabs alternative?

Scrape.ly, for scraping work. Its residential traffic costs $2 to $4 per GB without a $500 plan, it has 568 ready-made scrapers priced per result, and every run can have a dollar cap.

How much does Oxylabs cost?

Oxylabs' plans cost $30 (Starter), $100 (Basic) and $500 (Flexible) a month, and Enterprise starts at $2,500 a month. VAT may apply. Residential proxies cost $6, $5 and $4 per GB on those plans and $2.50 on Enterprise above 1,000 GB.

Is there a cheaper alternative to Oxylabs residential proxies?

Yes. Scrape.ly charges $3.50 per GB on its $19 Starter plan and $2.75 on its $199 Scale plan, below Oxylabs' $6 and $5 at similar budgets. Decodo's bundles run from $3.75 per GB down to $2.

Does Oxylabs have a free trial?

Oxylabs offers $5 of welcome credits toward any product. Scrape.ly gives you $5 of usage every month with no credit card, and Zyte $5 of credit for 30 days.

Can Scrape.ly replace the Oxylabs Web Scraper API?

For common sites, yes. Instead of sending requests and parsing the results, you run a Store Actor that returns structured rows, such as Amazon products at $0.70 per 1,000 or Google Maps places at $3.60 per 1,000. For other sites, you run your own scraper as an Actor with the built-in proxy.

Do I need separate proxies with Scrape.ly?

No. Every run can use the managed residential or datacenter proxy, and the traffic is billed per GB as part of the run. You can also bring your own proxy URLs.