Is yearly billing worth it for a scraping API?
Paying a year ahead takes 8% to 57% off the monthly price on the 20 of 58 subscription APIs here that sell a yearly plan, 17% on the middle one. For 100,000 JavaScript pages a month the lowest bill is $49.00 on ScrapeBadger, paid monthly; the lowest paid a year ahead is $75.00 a month on ScrapingDog. It is worth it only if your volume will still fit the same plan in twelve months.
Worked out from each vendor's own pricing page; each vendor page on this site shows the day its price was read.| API | Yearly saving | Smallest plan: monthly, then billed yearly | Plans with a yearly price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thunderbit | 40% to 57% | Extension and web app: Starter: $15 → $9 a month | 5 of 5 |
| Browserless | 29% to 30% | Prototyping: $35 → $25 a month | 3 of 3 |
| Scavio | 20% to 21% | Project: $30 → $24 a month | 4 of 4 |
| Browse AI | 21% | Personal 2k: $48 → $38 a month | 2 of 5 |
| Scale SERP | 20% | 10K Credits: $83 → $66 a month | 1 of 1 |
| SerpWow | 19% to 20% | Starter: $155 → $125 a month | 5 of 5 |
| Firecrawl | 16% to 20% | Hobby: $19 → $16 a month | 4 of 4 |
| Zenserp | 20% | Small: $49.99 → $39.99 a month | 5 of 5 |
| ScrapingDog | 17% to 18% | Lite: $40 → $33 a month | 27 of 27 |
| ZenRows | 15% to 17% | Build B1: $19 → $16 a month | 14 of 14 |
| Octoparse | 17% | Standard: $83 → $69 a month | 2 of 2 |
| HasData | 17% | Startup: $59 → $49.17 a month | 6 of 6 |
| Search1API | 17% | Basic: $19 → $15.83 a month | 3 of 3 |
| Scrape.do | 17% | Hobby: $29 → $24.17 a month | 4 of 4 |
| serpstack | 10% to 15% | Basic: $29.99 → $26.99 a month | 3 of 3 |
| ScrapeGraphAI | 15% | Starter: $20 → $17 a month | 3 of 3 |
| ValueSERP | 11% | 25K Credits: $56 → $50 a month | 1 of 1 |
| Apify | 10% to 11% | Starter: $19 → $17 a month | 3 of 3 |
| ScraperAPI | 10% | Hobby: $49 → $44.10 a month | 6 of 6 |
| Crawlbase | 8% | Starter: $99 → $90.75 a month | 4 of 4 |
The saving is the vendor's own yearly price against its own month-to-month price for the same plan, so it holds whatever your volume; whether the plan still fits your volume next year is the part only you can judge.
When the yearly price pays off
A yearly plan is the same plan paid twelve months ahead at a lower monthly rate. The saving is real only if the plan you pick today is still the right size in month twelve. Scraping volumes rarely stay flat: a project that needs 100,000 pages now may need 400,000 after launch, or nothing after a client leaves. If you outgrow the plan you pay its overage or move up a tier, and how a mid-year upgrade is billed depends on the vendor; if you shrink, whether you get the unused months back depends on its refund terms.
So the order that works is: run month to month until your volume has been steady for two or three billing cycles, then switch the plan you actually use to yearly. Before you do, read the vendor’s refund and downgrade terms; each vendor page on this site lists the ones the vendor publishes under “Limits and terms”.
What the table measures
Each row compares a vendor’s own yearly price with its own month-to-month price for the same plan, so the saving does not depend on your job. “Plans with a yearly price” counts the plans that offer both; a vendor whose larger plans are sold by quote may sell only its smaller ones yearly. APIs that bill only per use or in one-off credit packs have nothing to pay a year ahead and are not in the table.
To see what yearly billing does to your own bill, set “Billed yearly” on the calculator with your volume: it prices every API both ways from the same plans.