Browse AI Alternatives in 2026: 7 Tools Compared

Browse AI is the easiest way to scrape a website without writing code: click through a page in a recorder, point at the data. Browse AI learns the pattern and returns rows on a schedule. The flip side is what you pay for that convenience. Credits reset on a hard cycle (no rollover on the basic plans). Premium sites are flagged and billed a multiplier regardless of how many rows you actually extract. The moment your workload becomes more than “watch 50 pages for changes a few times a day,” the credit math gets tight. That is why teams start shopping for alternatives — usually the first time a cycle ends mid-month, or a Premium site eats 8 credits per run on a one-row dashboard.

This guide compares Browse AI with the alternatives that show up most often in that search: Apify and ZenRows on the API side. ScrapeOps as a unified proxy aggregator. Bright Data for scale. ScrapingBee and Browserless for code-first teams. Every number below comes from the vendor’s official pricing page. Figures that need a paid account to verify — actual anti-bot bypass rates, monitored-job reliability, the credit burn on your real target — are flagged where they appear in the text.

Where Browse AI sits in 2026

Browse AI is a no-code recorder running in the browser. You train a “robot” by clicking through a site and pointing at the data; the robot returns rows on demand, on a schedule, or as a change-detection monitor. Output is CSV, JSON or a webhook. There is no published custom-code path and no marketplace — Browse AI is the runtime.

The catch is the credit unit. One credit buys 10 rows or 1 screenshot. Sites that need rotating residential proxies plus CAPTCHA solving are flagged Premium and cost a minimum of 2–10 credits per run, regardless of how many rows you extract. A 50-row product page on a Premium site costs 2 credits. A one-row login-walled dashboard also costs 2 credits. That is the right shape for the common case — monitoring a small set of pages. It is the wrong shape for any row-bound workload at scale, where the credit math starts to dwarf the lowest published plan.

The published plan ladder (annually billed; monthly is ~2.5×):

Plan	Price	Credits	Websites	Users	What it pays for
Free	$0	50 / month	2	3	~500 rows/month, full platform
Personal	$19/mo ($228/yr)	12,000 / year	5	3	~1,200 rows/year on non-premium sites (≈100 rows/month); premium-site floor (2–10 credits per run) sharply reduces the row yield on this tier
Professional	$69/mo annual ($87 monthly)	60,000 / year	10	10	~5,000 rows/month on Premium
Premium	$500/mo annual	600,000+ / year	Custom	Custom	Dedicated AM, managed pipelines

Sources: browse.ai/pricing and help.browse.ai/article/137-premium-sites (captured September 2026). Credits do not roll over except on plan upgrade. The unused balance of the previous plan is added on top of the new plan. The real per-row credit cost against your actual targets depends on the Premium-site multiplier, which varies by domain, and on how many rows the recorder captures per page — confirm on a representative sample before sizing a paid plan.

What the alternatives actually change

The seven alternatives below split into three shapes. Each one solves a specific weakness in Browse AI: per-row pricing, the credit ceiling, scale ceilings, or the lack of a custom-code path.

The pattern across all of them is the same: the difference is in what you pay for. Browse AI pays rows. Apify pays compute units and bandwidth. ZenRows pays requests with multipliers. ScrapeOps pays requests or bandwidth. Bright Data pays gigabytes or records depending on the product. ScrapingBee pays credits with auto-mode. Browserless pays units of browser time. The fastest way to pick between them is to express your workload in each one’s native unit and see which one rates it cheapest.

Side-by-side comparison

A single table cannot capture every nuance, but it does let you match the right shape of tool to the workload you actually have. Prices and credits are from the official pricing pages, quoted in USD as displayed; promotional codes and Enterprise SKUs are excluded.

	Browse AI	Apify	ZenRows	ScrapeOps	Bright Data	ScrapingBee	Browserless
Category	No-code recorder	Programmable scraping platform + store	Scraping API (per successful request)	Proxy API Aggregator + Residential Aggregator	Multi-product web data platform	Scraping API (auto-mode credits)	Hosted browser (Puppeteer/Playwright)
Billing unit	1 credit = 10 rows or 1 screenshot; Premium 2–10 cr/run min	1 CU = 1 GB RAM × 1 hour + $/GB proxies + storage + transfer	1 credit = 1 successful request; JS 5×, Premium 10×, combined 25×	API aggregator: $/request; residential: $/GB	Web Scraper: $/record; Residential: $/GB; Browser: $/GB; Unlocker: $/1k	1–75 credits per request (1 classic, 5 JS, 10 premium, 25 premium+JS, 75 stealth+JS)	1 unit per 30 s per connection; 6 u/MB residential; 2 u/MB DC
Free tier	50 cr/mo, 2 sites, 3 users	$5 prepaid/mo, 16 GB RAM, 5 concurrent	Permanent 5,000 cr/mo, 5 concurrent, no card	1,000 API + 100 MB residential, no card	5K records/req per API product, no card	1,000 credits on signup, no card	1,000 units/mo, 2 browsers, 2-min max session
Cheapest paid	Personal $19/mo annual, 12,000 cr/yr	Starter $19/mo + PAYG, 64 GB RAM, 32 concurrent	Build B1 $19/mo, 45,000 cr/mo, 20 concurrent	Proxy API $9/mo (25K credits); Residential $15/mo (3 GB)	PAYG residential $4/GB; PAYG API $0 + usage	Hobby $19/mo, 75,000 credits, 25 concurrent	Prototyping $25/mo, 20,000 units, 10+5 concurrent
Mid-tier	Professional $69/mo annual, 60,000 cr/yr	Scale $199/mo + PAYG, 256 GB RAM, 128 concurrent	Launch L1 $69/mo, 250,000 cr/mo, 50 concurrent	Residential $45/mo (10 GB); API $29/mo (250K credits, 5 concurrent)	Residential Starter $499/mo (141 GB at $3.50/GB)	Startup $99/mo, 1,000,000 credits, 100 concurrent	Starter $140/mo, 180,000 units, 40+10 concurrent
High-tier	Premium $500/mo annual, 600,000+ cr/yr	Business $999/mo + PAYG, 512 GB RAM, 256 concurrent	Growth G1 $199/mo, 1,200,000 cr/mo, 100 concurrent	Residential $99/mo (25 GB); API $99/mo (1.25M credits, 50 concurrent)	Residential Growth $999/mo (332 GB); Business $1,999/mo (798 GB)	Business $249/mo, 3M credits, 200 concurrent, Premium proxy	Scale $350/mo, 500,000 units, 100+20 concurrent
Custom	Above Premium: sales contact	Enterprise: custom CU rate, SLAs	Enterprise: 400–1,000+ concurrent, premium support	Above $99/mo: sales contact	Enterprise: 99.99% SLA, custom $/GB	Business+ $599/mo, 8M credits, 400 concurrent, dedicated APIs	Enterprise: SSO, SLAs, custom proxy limits
JS rendering	Built-in (Chromium recorder)	Per-Actor; headless via Playwright Actor or browser pool	Built-in (5× credit multiplier)	Built-in; JS snippet execution	Built-in (Unlocker / Browser)	Built-in (5–75 credits per request)	Built-in (the product is the browser)
Anti-bot	Rotating residential + CAPTCHA; Premium multiplier	Metered (residential $7–8/GB, SERP, Unblocker $1–1.50/1k)	Premium proxies + CAPTCHA at 10–25×	Aggregates 20+ proxy APIs; ban and CAPTCHA detection	Strongest in set: Unlocker + Browser + fingerprinting	Premium 10–25 cr/req; Stealth 75 cr/req	DIY (6 u/MB residential, 10 u/captcha)
Concurrency	Not published; limited by platform load	5 → 32 → 128 → 256 (Free → Business)	5 → 20 → 50 → 100 → 200 → 400–1,000+	1 → 5 → 25 → 50 → 75 → 100 → 150 → 200	Unlimited on paid API products	25 → 50 → 100 → 200 → 400	2 → 10+5 → 40+10 → 100+20
Credit rules	Reset every cycle; no rollover (except on plan upgrade)	Prepaid usage never rolls over; PAYG thresholds per tier (see Apify billing docs)	Top-ups up to 4/period; unused roll over; rollover on paid	Only successful requests billed; pauses on credit-out	PAYG no commitment; per-product top-ups documented per API	Use-it-or-lose-it; 429 on overflow	Overage at $0.0015–0.0020/unit
Annual discount	-20% (Personal $48 → $19, Pro $87 → $69)	-10%	10 months for 12 (~17% off), full-year up front	n/a	n/a on PAYG APIs	n/a	n/a
KYC	None	None	None	None	Required for Residential / Mobile	None	None

Sources: apify.com/pricing + docs.apify.com/platform/account/billing; docs.zenrows.com/first-steps/pricing; browse.ai/pricing; scrapeops.io/proxy-api-aggregator/ + scrapeops.io/proxy-aggregator/; brightdata.com/pricing/proxy-network + brightdata.com/pricing/web-unlocker; scrapingbee.com/pricing/; browserless.io/pricing/.

The billing-unit trap: rows, requests, units, gigabytes

Browse AI vs ZenRows on the same request. Both charge per successful outcome, but ZenRows’ multiplier model is more granular. A protected page on Browse AI costs 2–10 credits per run minimum (a one-row dashboard costs the same as a 50-row product page, as long as it sits behind a CAPTCHA wall). A protected page on ZenRows costs 25 credits (Premium + JS); a classic page costs 1 credit. The math lands differently depending on how many rows the page actually returns.

Browse AI vs Apify on the same scrape. Browse AI’s $19/month is a fixed annual credit pack; Apify’s $19/month is a prepaid platform-usage allowance that pays for whatever you run. Apify’s per-CU rate starts at $0.20 on Free/Starter, drops to $0.16 on Scale and $0.13 on Business; proxies add $7–8/GB. Long-running scrapes that return a lot of pages for low cost per page are cheaper on Apify; a small set of pages watched on a schedule is cheaper on Browse AI.

ScrapingBee auto-mode vs Browse AI. ScrapingBee auto-mode picks the cheapest successful configuration and caps with max_cost. Premium + JS is 25 credits; Stealth + JS is 75. The max_cost cap gives you a per-request ceiling, which Browse AI does not — Premium-site runs are billed at the vendor’s published floor regardless.

Bright Data free tier vs ScrapeOps free tier vs the rest. Bright Data offers 5,000 records or requests per month on every API product. ScrapeOps offers 1,000 API credits plus 100 MB residential bandwidth. Browse AI, ZenRows, Apify and ScrapingBee all have free tiers, but only ScrapeOps and Bright Data combine API + residential bandwidth in the free allowance.

Browserless units vs everyone else’s credits. One Browserless unit is up to 30 seconds of browser time. A 90-second session is 3 units; residential proxies are 6 units per MB; CAPTCHA solving is 10 units per solve; session reconnects count as new connections. The math is concrete, but you have to budget it for every step in the flow.

Run a 100-page pilot on each platform’s free tier against your real target before committing. The cost on your workload is the only number that pricing pages cannot give you.

Worked example: 1,000 Premium-site pages a day

A scrape of 1,000 Premium-site pages per day, 10 rows per page, is the workload that Browse AI handles worst — Premium sites trigger the 2–10 credit per-run floor regardless of row count.

• Browse AI Premium ($500/mo annual, 600,000 cr/yr): 30,000 runs × 2–10 credits minimum ≈ 60,000–300,000 credits/month; over the Premium annual budget at the upper end.
• Apify Scale ($199/mo + PAYG, $0.16/CU, $7.50/GB residential): a custom Actor scraping 1,000 pages/day at 30s each with 1 GB RAM ≈ 8.3 CU/day at $0.16 + ~10 GB/month residential. Total ≈ $240–$260/month on top of the $199 prepaid allowance.
• ZenRows Growth G1 ($199/mo, 1,200,000 cr/mo, 100 concurrent): without JS/Premium = 900,000 credits/month (within budget); with Premium + JS (25×) = 22,500,000 credits/month — far over.
• ScrapeOps Proxy API Aggregator ($99/mo, 1.25M credits, 50 concurrent): 30,000 credits/day = 900,000 credits/month, under the $99 plan. Anti-bot bundled; residential sidecar billed separately.
• Bright Data PAYG: Residential PAYG ($4/GB) + Web Unlocker PAYG. ~30 GB/month at $4/GB + Unlocker usage ≈ $200–$300/month, no commitment.
• ScrapingBee Startup ($99/mo, 1,000,000 credits, 100 concurrent): covers the same workload at auto-mode pricing.
• Browserless: 30-second sessions × 30,000/month = 900,000 units — over the Scale plan’s 500,000. Plus residential 6 u/MB and CAPTCHA 10 u/solve.

Your real page fetch size and whether the target triggers Premium-site pricing on Browse AI or premium-tier credit costs on the alternatives are workload-specific. The cost structure is real, but per-row math depends on inputs you can only measure against a live target.

Anti-bot and JavaScript rendering

Each platform handles anti-bot and JS rendering differently — and the differences are larger than the price differences.

Built in. Browse AI ships rotating residential proxies and CAPTCHA solving, with Premium sites flagged and billed a minimum of 2–10 credits per run. ScrapeOps bundles 20+ proxy APIs behind one endpoint with ban detection, CAPTCHA detection, sticky sessions and country geotargeting. Bright Data bundles Web Unlocker + Scraping Browser — the strongest anti-bot product in the set, with 99.99% SLA on Enterprise.

Built in, metered. ZenRows uses fixed multipliers — JS 5×, Premium proxies 10×, combined 25×; Browser Sessions are 25,000 credits per GB + 5 per minute. Apify exposes every layer as a separate metered product — residential $7–8/GB, datacenter per IP, SERP per 1k, Unblocker $1–1.50 per 1k — and runs headless Chromium via the Playwright Actor, billed at CU rates. ScrapingBee’s Premium proxy is 10–25 credits per request and Stealth proxy is 75, with built-in CAPTCHA evasion and JS rendering at the same multiplier.

Bring your own. Browserless does not bundle anti-bot. You choose your proxy type via BrowserQL (residential 6 units/MB, datacenter 2 units/MB) and pay 10 units per successful CAPTCHA solve on top of base.

On hard targets (Cloudflare, DataDome, PerimeterX), the order of capability is usually Bright Data > ScrapeOps aggregator > Apify Store (premium Actors) > ScrapingBee Stealth > Browse AI Premium > ZenRows Premium > Browserless DIY. The cost gradient looks similar.

Vendors do not publish “we beat the other” numbers — confirm the actual anti-bot success rate on the targets you care about on a pilot before committing.

Plan ladders, free tiers, and the annual billing cliff

Three things stand out across the ladders:

1. The $19 entry tier spans four vendors. Browse AI Personal, Apify Starter, ZenRows B1 and ScrapingBee Hobby all sit at $19/month — but they buy four different things. Browse AI’s $19 buys 12,000 credits once a year; Apify’s $19 buys $19 of prepaid platform usage every month at $0.20/CU. ZenRows’ B1 buys 45,000 credits per month with rollover; ScrapingBee’s Hobby buys 75,000 credits per month with no rollover. Map your workload to the cheapest native unit. Not the cheapest dollar entry. 2. The jump from mid to high is largest on Browse AI. $69 → $500 monthly is a 7× step that bundles dedicated account management. Fully managed data pipelines and a 10× credit allowance. Bright Data’s $499 → $999 is 2× with 2.4× bandwidth. Apify’s $199 → $999 is 5× with 2× RAM and 2× concurrent runs. 3. Free tiers favor API-first vendors. ScrapeOps (1,000 API + 100 MB residential). Bright Data (5K on every API), ScrapingBee (1,000 on signup), ZenRows (5,000 permanent), Apify ($5 prepaid) and Browse AI (50/month) all let you run a real workload. Browserless’ free tier (1,000 units, 2-min sessions) is too tight for production.

When a no-code recorder beats an API

Pick Browse AI when the data sits on a small set of pages you already know (10–50 detail pages or one product search URL), watched on a schedule. Pick when you need to hand the recorder to a non-technical team member. Pick when you would rather pay a fixed annual credit allowance than a PAYG bill. Pick when you want change-detection monitors with a built-in alert path. Pick when you are running the workload for less than a year and want the 60-day satisfaction guarantee to back the first two annual cycles.

When the alternatives make more sense

• Apify. You want a programmable platform. Pick when the Apify Store covers your target. Pick when you want granular proxy control. Pick when you run long jobs that return a lot of data per dollar.
• ZenRows. Your workload is request-shaped. Pick when you want a permanent free tier and 1-month rollover on paid plans. Pick when fixed multipliers are easier to budget than Premium-site floors.
• ScrapeOps. You want one endpoint that aggregates 20+ proxy APIs. Pick when you want the account to pause on credit-out (no surprise charges). Pick when you are okay with two meters.
• Bright Data. You are scraping at scale across 195 countries with city-level targeting. Pick when you need the strongest anti-bot product (Web Unlocker + Scraping Browser). Pick when you can absorb the $499/month Residential minimum and KYC.
• ScrapingBee. You want auto-mode with a max_cost cap. Pick when you need dedicated vertical APIs on Business+. Pick when you want US-state geotargeting.
• Browserless. You already write Puppeteer / Playwright / Selenium code; you want a hosted browser with proxies as an add-on; you want a self-hosted Docker option for on-prem.

Key parameters at a glance (and what they actually decide)

Vendor	Cheapest paid	Mid-tier	Free tier	Native unit	Built-in anti-bot	Concurrency cap	Best fit
Browse AI	$19/mo annual	$69/mo annual	50 cr/mo, 2 sites	Row + Premium-site multiplier	Yes	Not published	Non-technical teams, monitored jobs
Apify	$19/mo + PAYG	$199/mo + PAYG	$5 prepaid	Compute Unit (GB × hour)	Metered	5 → 256	Programmable scrapers, custom Actors
ZenRows	$19/mo (B1)	$199/mo (G1)	5,000 cr/mo permanent	Successful request × multiplier	Yes (10–25×)	5 → 200	Per-request APIs, JS rendering
ScrapeOps	$9/mo API / $15/mo res	$29/mo / $45/mo	1,000 API + 100 MB	Per request (API) or per GB	Yes (aggregates 20+)	1 → 200	Single-vendor proxy aggregation
Bright Data	PAYG from $0	$499/mo Residential	5K records/req per API	$/GB, $/record, $/1k	Yes (Unlocker + Browser)	Unlimited on paid APIs	Multi-product web data, hardest targets
ScrapingBee	$19/mo Hobby	$99/mo Startup	1,000 credits signup	Credit per request (1–75)	Yes (10–75 cr)	25 → 400	Auto-mode with cap, dedicated vertical APIs
Browserless	$25/mo Prototyping	$140/mo Starter	1,000 units/mo	Units of browser time + proxy MB	Bring your own	2 → 100+20	Code-first Puppeteer / Playwright

FAQ

Verdict

Browse AI is the fastest way to point a recorder at a page and walk away with rows. The cost is what happens when a workload stops being row-bound.

The six alternatives divide by workflow:

• Apify when you want a programmable platform with an Actor store, granular proxy control, and a bill that scales with memory, time, and bandwidth. Best for workloads that run a lot of pages for low cost per page.
• ZenRows when the workload is request-shaped and you want fixed multipliers (5× JS, 10× Premium, 25× combined) you can budget per call. The only vendor with a permanent free tier and rollover on paid plans.
• ScrapeOps when you want one endpoint aggregating 20+ proxy APIs behind it, with an account that pauses on credit-out instead of running into surprise charges.
• Bright Data when you need to scrape at scale across 195 countries, need the strongest anti-bot product (Web Unlocker + Scraping Browser), and can absorb $499/month Residential minimum plus KYC.
• ScrapingBee when you want auto-mode with max_cost, dedicated vertical APIs, and US-state geotargeting.
• Browserless when you already write Puppeteer / Playwright / Selenium code and want a hosted browser with proxies as an add-on, plus a self-hosted Docker option.

Spend the free credits on each before you commit — our editorial policy explains why unverified figures are marked rather than estimated. The cost you measure on your own workload is the only number pricing pages cannot give you.