Side-by-side comparisons of web access and scraping APIs, kept current by the String team.
Nine web search APIs for AI agents and apps compared on what they search, what they return and what they cost, with a same-day test of String and Perplexity on 58 questions. Google results, AI Overviews and AI Mode, independent indexes, and the two official APIs that closed.
Twelve web scraping tools compared by the job they do, on the September 2026 benchmark of 100 bot-protected sites: eight hosted APIs with measured success rates, the open-source frameworks and a no-code app, plus Oxylabs vs Apify, when to move off Scrapy, MCP servers and verified pricing.
We compared six Diffbot alternatives on a 100-site web scraping benchmark and on verified pricing: success rates, latency, structured extraction, cost near $100 a month, how each one handles single-product pages, and the jobs where Diffbot is still the right tool. String, Zyte, Firecrawl, ScraperAPI, Apify and Bright Data.
Firecrawl vs Bright Data for AI agents, measured on the same 100 real sites in the September 2026 Web Data Frontier Benchmark: success rates, how long an agent waits when a call fails, anti-bot coverage system by system, MCP servers, free tiers, what $100 a month buys, and which one to wire into an agent.
Oxylabs and six alternatives on the September 2026 benchmark of 100 bot-protected sites: the 24 sites Oxylabs returned nothing on, a site-by-site Oxylabs vs Zyte result, residential proxy prices per GB, and what $100 a month buys.
String vs ScrapingAnt on 100 bot-protected sites in September 2026: 97.0% against 36.4%, residential-proxy testing, credit multipliers, and the free tier.
String and Scrapingdog compared on 100 real sites in September 2026: success, latency, anti-bot coverage, pricing, premium proxies, dedicated APIs, and fit.
Firecrawl and six alternatives on the September 2026 benchmark of 100 bot-protected sites, plus six free and open-source libraries, the enterprise picks, verified pricing at $100 a month, and where Firecrawl is still the right choice.
String vs Browserbase on 100 bot-protected sites in September 2026: 97.0% against 41.4%, latency score, price per usable page, and when a hosted browser wins.
String vs Context.dev on 100 bot-protected sites in September 2026: 97.0% against 72.0%, latency, flat-credit pricing, and what changed between runs.
String vs Decodo on 100 bot-protected sites in the September 2026 benchmark: 97.0% against 50.6%, strongest-mode testing, premium-plus-JS pricing, and what changed between runs.
String vs Nimble on 100 bot-protected sites in September 2026: 97.0% against 68.6%, pricing, product breadth, and where Nimble wins.
String vs ZenRows on 100 real sites in September 2026: success, latency, credit multipliers, pay-per-success billing, browser tools, and fit.
String vs Zyte on an open benchmark of 100 real sites in September 2026: success rate, latency, tiered pricing, HTTP and browser paths, and fit by job.
Standard vs premium pricing for 16 web scraping APIs, credit multipliers, which failures still bill, and the rate each provider charges for the configuration it ran on a 100-site benchmark.
Eight e-commerce scraping APIs measured on the 43 retail, fashion, marketplace and grocery sites in the September 16, 2026 Web Data Frontier Benchmark. String, Scrapfly, ScraperAPI, Firecrawl, Oxylabs, Apify, ScrapingBee and Bright Data, with per-vertical success rates, verified pricing, and the sites that still open for nobody.
Sixteen web scraping APIs measured against the same 100 bot-protected sites, five attempts each, plus verified pricing at the $100-a-month tier, free-tier sizes, and the billing rule each vendor publishes. Success rates, latency, anti-bot results, and a pick for each job.
String vs ScraperAPI on 100 real sites in the September 2026 benchmark: success, latency, credit multipliers, billing, MCP support, and which product fits which workload.
String and Scrapfly compared on 100 real sites in the September 2026 benchmark: success rate, latency, anti-bot coverage, pricing, product breadth, and where each wins.
String and ScrapingBee compared on 100 real sites in the September 2026 benchmark: coverage, latency, pricing, Auto Mode, MCP, extraction, and where each product fits.
Seven Apify alternatives on open benchmark data, compared on pricing model and output format, plus the jobs where a prebuilt Actor still wins.
Seven Scrape.do alternatives compared on a 99-site web scraping benchmark and on pricing checked against each vendor's own pages: success rate, response times, cost near $100 a month, anti-bot results and MCP support. String, Scrapfly, Context.dev, Firecrawl, Bright Data, Oxylabs and Zyte, plus what Scrape.do's own price list says about the sites it finds hard.
A three-way comparison of ScraperAPI, ZenRows and ScrapingBee built from a 99-site benchmark run and each vendor's own pricing docs. Includes the targets where only one of the three returns a page, what each costs at its strongest setting, and the configuration caveat that applies to two of them.
Five ScraperAPI alternatives on a 99-site benchmark and verified pricing: String, Scrapfly, Firecrawl, Bright Data, Zyte. Success, latency, cost.
Six ZenRows alternatives on a 99-site scraping benchmark: String 97.0% against ZenRows 34.3%, verified pricing, and what $100 a month buys.
Seven Nimble alternatives compared on a 99-site web scraping benchmark and on pricing verified against each vendor's own pages: success rate, latency, cost at $100 a month, results behind Akamai and Cloudflare, and MCP support. String, Scrapfly, Context.dev, Firecrawl, Bright Data, Oxylabs and Decodo, plus the case for staying on Nimble.
String vs Bright Data on an open benchmark of 99 real sites: success rate, latency, pricing, product breadth, and which one fits which job.
String vs Oxylabs on an open benchmark of 99 real sites: success rate, latency, pricing, proxy products, and which one fits which job.
String vs Firecrawl on an open benchmark of 99 real sites: success rate, latency score, price per usable page, and which to pick for which job.
Six Bright Data alternatives on a 99-site scraping benchmark: String 97.0% against Bright Data 78.0%, verified pricing, and what $100 a month buys.
Six Zyte alternatives on a 99-site benchmark and verified pricing: String, Scrapfly, Context.dev, Firecrawl, Bright Data, Oxylabs. Success, latency, cost.
