Simplescraper alternative: Web Scraper vs Simplescraper
Simplescraper turns pages into recipes and bills credits per cloud page, with rendering costing two credits. Web Scraper Cloud runs selector-based sitemaps on a plan priced by concurrent scraping capacity, with unlimited URL credits and no extra charge for JavaScript rendering.
Reviewed October 2026 Every claim below links to a current vendor page.
You run recurring extraction at volume and want a fee that does not track page count or rendering.
You want email alerts when a watched page changes, or pages saved as Markdown, next to your scrape recipes.
Web Scraper vs Simplescraper: features and pricing
Compare how Web Scraper and Simplescraper handle setup, Cloud automation, integrations, proxies, and scaling. Web Scraper Scale is compared with Simplescraper Scale (200K credits), the highest self-service plan each vendor prices publicly.
| CAPABILITY | Web Scraper Scale, $200 per month | Simplescraper Scale (200K credits), $410 per month |
|---|---|---|
| Setup and creation | ||
| Where scrapers are built | Visual sitemap builder in a browser extension Free extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, with no code or desktop application required. | Browser extension recipes Point and click in the browser, saved as a recipe. |
| AI-assisted setup | AI Sitemap Wizard Maps repeated listing data, detects pagination and infinite scrolling, and follows item links to collect fields from detail pages. | Smart Extract (beta) List the fields you want, and AI extracts them and returns CSS selectors that can be saved as a recipe. |
| Manual selector control | Advanced Sitemap Builder Point and click, AI selector generation for listing and detail pages, and 10+ selector types for data, navigation, and clicks. | CSS selectors in a recipe Selectors can be edited when the visual pick is wrong. |
| Logins and site setup | Website State Setup Signs in or sets location, language, or currency before scraping, only when that state is missing, with passwords encrypted in Cloud. | Saved logins or cookies An encrypted password covers a domain's recipes, or cookies are pasted in; no location or currency setup. |
| Ready-made starting points | Sitemap Marketplace Ready-made sitemaps maintained by Web Scraper, available at no additional cost. | Readymade recipes Recipe templates for popular websites, with no code required. |
| Cloud automation | ||
| Cloud execution | Web Scraper Cloud Runs sitemaps created in the Web Scraper extension remotely after sync or import. | Cloud runs Recipes can run in the cloud or in the browser. |
| Scheduling | Daily, interval, and custom CRON Intervals as short as 1 minute, with a selectable time zone and driver, proxy, and priority set per schedule. | Scheduled cloud runs Recipes can run on a schedule in the cloud. |
| Rendering and execution modes | Full JS and Fast drivers Full JS loads pages in a full browser environment; Fast skips page JavaScript to scrape faster. | JavaScript on by default A cloud page with JavaScript costs two credits instead of one. |
| Retry behavior | Automatic retries of empty or failed pages Retries use a different proxy IP and browser fingerprint, and do not consume URL credits. CAPTCHAs and bot check pages are solved automatically. | Auto-retries Listed among the features; how retries are billed is not published. |
| Concurrency model | Concurrent scrapers Starts at 2 concurrent scrapers and scales with no set ceiling; add capacity at any time. A single job can expand to up to 5 concurrent scrapers. | No concurrency limits Cloud and API runs have no concurrency limit. |
| Data and integrations | ||
| Data cleaning | Parser, with no code Regex, replace, HTML stripping, virtual columns, and timestamp conversion, previewed on sample records and applied in Cloud. | AI Enhance prompts AI instructions clean, format, or translate each column after a run, charged in credits. |
| Data quality checks | Thresholds on every job Minimum records, maximum failed or empty pages, and minimum filled fields, with suggested values from a previous run. | Fixed health checks Recipe Health flags empty results, failed pages, and blocking after each run; thresholds are not user-set. |
| API | Cloud API with an OpenAPI description Manage sitemaps, jobs, and schedules, and download results, with code examples for every programming language. | API access Recipes can be triggered and read programmatically. |
| Webhooks | Job status webhooks Sent when a job finishes, stops, or fails, with job and sitemap IDs and an optional custom ID, and retried if your endpoint does not respond. | Data webhooks Scraped rows are posted as JSON when a scrape completes, and monitors can post page changes; no failure events are documented. |
| Data export formats | CSV, XLSX, JSON Each scraping job's data can be downloaded in all three formats. | CSV, JSON, and Markdown Run results download as CSV or JSON, and a recipe can also save each page's text as Markdown. |
| Export integrations | Google Sheets, Google Drive, Dropbox, S3, Google Cloud, Azure The complete dataset is sent after each job finishes. | Google Sheets, Airtable, email Set up per recipe; emails attach the data, up to 5 MB. |
| Notifications | Email and in-app alerts Alerts when a job fails or misses its data quality thresholds, with email and in-app channels set per alert type. | Email change alerts Page monitors email your account when a watched page changes; failure alerts are advertised without a documented channel. |
| Image and file handling | Image export Downloads images during the scraping job using the Image selector and delivers the files to Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, or Azure Blob Storage. | Image URLs only Recipes return image links; the Screenshot API captures pages, not the images on them. |
| Scale and pricing | ||
| Plan compared | Scale, $200 per month $2,000 per year billed annually, $167 per month. | Scale (200K credits), $410 per month Highest self-service tier. |
| What the plan fee buys | Unlimited URL credits The fee buys concurrent scraping capacity, and page volume does not change it. | 200,000 credits per month A cloud page costs two credits with JavaScript on, the default, and one only in a single-page run without it. |
| Cost per 1,000 URLs no JS, DC proxies | From $0.03 Fast driver on the included datacenter proxies; two scrapers at $200 per month cover about 4.3M URLs. | $4.10 Every page of a multi-page run loads a full browser, so plain pages cost two credits too. |
| Cost per 1,000 URLs JS, DC proxies | From $0.05 Full JS driver on the included datacenter proxies; two scrapers at $200 per month cover about 2.2M URLs. | $4.10 Two credits per cloud page with JavaScript on, the default. |
| Cost per 1,000 URLs JS, Residential proxies | From $0.681 Full JS driver plus residential traffic, sold separately at $2.50 per GB. | No published residential rate The extract API accepts a residential proxy type, but its credit cost is not published. |
| Unused capacity | No credit ceiling Unlimited URL credits leave no balance to forfeit at the end of a cycle. | Credits expire monthly Credits are valid only for the subscription month. |
| Included datacenter proxies | US, GB, and DE datacenter proxies Included at no additional cost. | Proxy rotation Listed among the features; the extract API offers standard, premium, and residential proxy types, and no locations are published. |
| Residential proxies | Available at $2.50 per GB In 47 locations, billed on bandwidth used. | Extract API option The extract API accepts a residential proxy type; its credit cost and locations are not published. |
| Third-party fees | Marketplace sitemaps at no extra cost They run on your own plan, with no separate per-result charge. | None published Recipes run against your plan credits. |
| Cloud data retention | 60 days Scraped data stays available to download from Cloud for that period. | 30 days Results from each run are available for that period. |
1 Proxy traffic is sold separately, so the price is calculated based on a 250 KB page size.
Reasons to choose Web Scraper
Build it where the page is
Sitemaps are built in the free extension for Chrome, Firefox, or Edge, with the AI Sitemap Wizard or point and click, then synced to Cloud to run on a schedule.
Web Scraper extensionOne plan, one line item
Scraping, scheduling, datacenter proxies, the Parser, data quality checks, and delivery sit inside the Cloud plan, with no separate proxy or per-result bill to reconcile.
Web Scraper pricingVolume stops moving the invoice
The fee buys concurrent scraping capacity with unlimited URL credits, so a bigger crawl does not raise it, and retries of empty or failed pages cost nothing.
Web Scraper pricingWeb Scraper Scale vs Simplescraper Scale (200K credits)
Each side is shown at its highest self-service plan with published pricing.
Web Scraper Cloud · Scale
$200 per month
Or $2,000 per year billed annually, $167 per month
- Capacity
- Unlimited URL credits
- Concurrency
- Starts at 2 concurrent scrapers, scales with no set ceiling; a single job can use up to 5
- Proxies
- US, GB, and DE datacenter proxies included; residential in 47 locations at $2.50 per GB
- Plan limitation
- Capacity grows by adding concurrent scrapers, at a lower price per scraper as you add more; residential proxy traffic is billed on usage
- Cost per 1,000 URLs no JS, DC proxies
- From $0.03
- Cost per 1,000 URLs JS, DC proxies
- From $0.05
- Cost per 1,000 URLs JS, Residential proxies
- From $0.681
Simplescraper · Scale (200K credits)
$410 per month
Billed monthly.
- Capacity
- 200,000 credits per month
- Concurrency
- No limits, per the features list
- Proxies
- Proxy rotation; a residential proxy type in the extract API, with no published credit cost
- Plan limitation
- A cloud page with JavaScript costs two credits, and credits are valid only for the subscription month
- Cost per 1,000 URLs no JS, DC proxies
- $4.10
- Cost per 1,000 URLs JS, DC proxies
- $4.10
- Cost per 1,000 URLs JS, Residential proxies
- No published residential rate
The two prices do not buy the same unit
A Simplescraper credit covers one cloud page only in a single-page run without JavaScript; with JavaScript on, the default, or in a multi-page run, each page costs two. Web Scraper charges for concurrent scraping capacity, with unlimited URL credits whichever driver runs.
- The Simplescraper figure divides the plan fee by its included credits, at two credits per cloud page.
- Both prices are monthly list prices from each vendor's public pricing page.
- 1 Proxy traffic is sold separately, so the price is calculated based on a 250 KB page size.
Simplescraper suits teams that want page-change alerts by email or pages saved as Markdown alongside their recipes.
Switching from Simplescraper
Can a recipe be imported?
Scrapers move over as Web Scraper sitemaps built in the free browser extension, where the AI Sitemap Wizard maps listing pages for you. Many common targets also have a ready-made Marketplace sitemap that you can import into Web Scraper Cloud.
How does the bill change?
A credit balance that costs double for rendered pages is replaced by a capacity plan. The fee buys concurrent scrapers with unlimited URL credits.
Does rendering cost extra?
No. The Full JS driver and the Fast driver both consume one URL credit per page load; only throughput differs.
How does data reach our systems?
Results are retrieved through the API or delivered to Google Sheets, Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure after each job. Webhook notifications report job status and identifiers.
See it applied to your use case
Compare Web Scraper with other tools
Most teams shortlist two or three tools. These pages cover the same capabilities and plan tiers.
Try it on the website you want to scrape
Use the 7-day free trial, with no credit card required, to run Web Scraper Cloud on the website you need data from.
This comparison reflects publicly available information and our understanding of the products as of October 2026. Features, pricing, and other details may change over time, so we recommend verifying current information directly with each provider before making a decision. All product names, trademarks, logos, and brands belong to their respective owners and are referenced solely for identification and comparison purposes. No affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement is implied.