Diffbot alternatives in 2026

TL;DR

• Start with what you need from Diffbot: page text, structured fields, or Knowledge Graph data. This guide compares fetching, crawling, and extraction tools—not full Knowledge Graph replacements.
• For AI-ready page content: consider TinyFetch for known URLs within its free allowance, or Parallel for usage-based webpage and PDF extraction.
• For crawling and access: consider Firecrawl for collecting content across a site, Crawl4AI for self-hosting, and ZenRows for protected pages.
• For repeatable workflows: consider Apify for ready-made scrapers, Browse AI for no-code extraction, and Oxylabs for volume-based pricing.
• Compare usable results, not headline credits. Test the same URLs and check completeness, output format, speed, and total cost before switching.

Diffbot alternatives at a glance

Compare each tool’s main use case, pricing, and limitations below. Diffbot is included as a baseline to help you assess what changes when you switch.

For head-to-head breakdowns, see all TinyFish comparisons.

Why do people look for a Diffbot alternative?

Diffbot offers several web-data services. Diffbot Extract identifies page types and returns information in structured JSON using standard schemas. Its Knowledge Graph provides entity records, such as organizations and people, rather than simply returning the contents of a supplied URL.

Before switching, identify which service you use and what your application needs from it. A tool that returns Markdown or a JSON document tree may still require additional processing to produce the fields your application expects.

Compare these pricing and capacity limits against your workload:

• Limited free-plan concurrency. Diffbot’s free plan includes 10,000 credits a month and one thread. On Free, exceeding the credit allowance or rate limit returns a “429 Quota Exceeded” response.
• The first paid plan is a big step up. Startup costs $299/month for 250,000 credits. Overage is $0.001 per credit, and the plan includes 25 threads.
• Credits add up with proxies. Extracting one page costs 1 credit, or 2 credits through a datacenter proxy. A proxy is an intermediary server that sends your requests from a different IP address.

Diffbot charges no credits for the crawling action itself, but Crawl access starts on the Plus plan at $899/month, with 25 active crawls. Extracting page data consumes credits separately. Compare the subscription cost and extraction usage together when evaluating a crawling workflow.

Readers who look elsewhere usually need one or more of these:

• Markdown page content for workflows that do not need Diffbot’s structured extraction schemas.
• A free tier usable beyond testing.
• Help with protected sites.
• Self-hosting.
• An option for teams without developers.

If your job is wider than fetching and crawling, our guide to structured data extraction tools covers the broader category.

The shortlist: which Diffbot alternative fits which job

1. TinyFetch: Best for free page fetching for AI apps

TinyFetch is the right pick when you already have the URLs and want clean, AI-ready text at no per-page cost.

What it is: TinyFetch is TinyFish's fetch API. You send a URL and get the page back as clean markdown, HTML or JSON. Markdown is plain text with light formatting that AI models read easily. JSON is structured data that software reads easily.

Best for: Use it to feed live web pages into AI agents, LLM apps and data pipelines without a per-page bill. One example is competitor pricing intelligence.

Who it suits: Developers integrate the API, the SDKs (ready-made code libraries) or the CLI (a command-line tool run from a terminal). Non-technical teams can reach TinyFetch through n8n, a workflow automation tool. They can also use MCP, a standard way to connect tools to AI assistants such as Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor.

Pricing: TinyFetch costs $0.00 per URL within its free allowance of 150 URLs per minute and 1,000 URLs per day. No card or prepaid Wallet funds are required for usage within those limits. For higher-volume requirements, confirm the available limits and pricing with TinyFish.

Diffbot’s free allowance is measured in monthly credits; TinyFetch’s is measured in daily URLs. Compare the cost of your actual extraction workflow rather than treating those allowances as equivalent page counts.

Strengths:

• TinyFetch loads pages in a real browser before extraction. Content that appears only after the page loads, known as JavaScript-rendered content, comes through.
• Navigation, cookie banners, ads and repeated footers are removed, giving agents cleaner input for better reasoning.
• Markdown is the default output, with HTML or JSON as options.
• You can send up to 10 URLs per request, and one failed URL doesn't fail the rest.
• It also extracts text from PDFs.

A first request, from the TinyFish docs, is one call:

curl -X POST https://api.fetch.tinyfish.ai \
  -H "X-API-Key: $TINYFISH_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"urls": ["https://www.tinyfish.ai/"]}'

Limits:

• The free allowance is capped at 1,000 URLs per day. Confirm the available higher-volume options before planning a larger workload.
• 10 URLs per request is a smaller batch than Parallel's 20.
• TinyFetch is targeted. It fetches the URLs you give it and does not walk a whole site for you. It can return a page's links so your code can choose what to fetch next. If you need whole-site collection, Firecrawl or Crawl4AI fit better.
• When a site returns a bot-protection challenge, that URL comes back in the error list. For heavily protected sites, ZenRows is a closer fit. Within TinyFish, the docs route bot-protected sites to TinyAgent with stealth mode and a proxy, paid from the Wallet.

Compliance and deployment. If your security team reviews vendors, Enterprise lists ISO 27001 and offers VPC deployment, which runs the service inside your company's own private cloud network.

More than a scraping tool: the TinyFish platform

Within TinyFish, TinyFetch retrieves content from known URLs, while TinySearch helps discover relevant pages. For workflows that require actions on a website, TinyAgent handles that separate task.

2. Firecrawl: Best for crawling whole sites into clean content

Firecrawl is an option for teams replacing a website-crawling workflow with content prepared for AI applications.

What it is: Firecrawl is an API that turns any URL, or a whole website, into markdown, HTML or structured JSON.

Best for: Collecting content across a website for an AI application or knowledge base.

Who it suits: It suits developers. Teams that want to run it on their own servers can self-host it.

Pricing: Firecrawl's free tier gives 1,000 credits every month, refreshed monthly, with no credit card. Hobby costs $19/month billed monthly, or $16/month billed annually, for 5,000 credits. That covers 2,500 searches or 5,000 pages scraped. A basic scrape or crawl costs 1 credit per page, and each Map call costs 1 credit. Monthly plans can be topped up pay-as-you-go.

Strengths:

• Crawl follows links to collect page content, while Map discovers website URLs before extraction. Coverage depends on the site and your configuration.
• Rate limits vary by endpoint. Free allows 10 requests per minute for Scrape and Map, but 2 for Crawl. Hobby allows 100 for Scrape and Map, but 20 for Crawl.
• You can choose its open-source, self-hosted option.

Limits:

• Credit use varies by endpoint and feature, so heavier features cost more than a basic page.
• Per-endpoint rate limits are 10 requests a minute on Free and 100 on Hobby. Higher tiers go up to 500, 5,000 and 10,000 a minute.
• Self-hosting requires operating the infrastructure and configuring additional services for advanced capabilities; it does not automatically include every managed Cloud feature.

If you are weighing the two directly, see TinyFish vs Firecrawl.

2. ZenRows: Best for sites that block scrapers

ZenRows fits best when your target pages actively block automated visitors.

What it is: ZenRows is a scraping API built to get clean content from standard, dynamic or protected pages. It returns HTML, markdown, JSON or a screenshot.

Best for: It targets pages behind anti-bot walls, CAPTCHAs and fingerprint checks. A fingerprint check is a site testing whether your browser looks like a real visitor.

Who it suits: Developers.

Pricing: ZenRows' free plan gives 5,000 credits a month with no card. It allows 5 concurrent requests, meaning 5 requests can run at the same time. Build starts at $19/month with monthly billing, or $16/month equivalent with annual billing, for 45,000 credits per month.

Strengths.

• It gets through blockers on every product, not just Fetch.
• A Crawl option follows links from a starting page as deep as you choose. Each page is billed as a Fetch.
• Batch runs process thousands of URLs as one managed job.

Limits:

Requests using both JavaScript rendering and premium proxies cost 25 credits each. A 45,000-credit allowance covers 1,800 requests at that rate if all credits are used for that configuration. Actual capacity depends on the mix of requests you run.

Compliance:

TinyFish lists ISO 27001 and VPC deployment among its Enterprise offerings. Confirm the deployment architecture and security scope against your organization’s requirements.

3. Crawl4AI: Best for running an open-source crawling library yourself

Crawl4AI suits teams that want the code on their own servers.

What it is: Crawl4AI is an open-source crawling library under the Apache-2.0 licence. It turns websites into clean, LLM-ready markdown. Open source means you can read the code and run it on your own servers. There is also a paid hosted Cloud option.

Best for: Teams that want full control over where crawling runs and where data goes.

Who it suits: Developers. Self-hosting takes engineering time to set up and maintain.

Pricing:

• The open-source library has no licence fee, but you cover the infrastructure, proxies, and maintenance required to run it.
• Cloud Free gives 1,000 credits a month, 10 requests a minute and 2 at a time, with no card.
• Starter costs from $10/month with 10,000 credits, 120 requests a minute and 10 at a time.
• On Cloud, a plain page costs 0.1 credit, a browser-rendered page costs 0.5 credits, and a hard site costs 2 credits. The effective price per credit depends on the plan.

Strengths:

• It supports deep crawling with BFS and BestFirst strategies. BFS visits pages level by level outward from the start page. BestFirst visits the most promising pages first.
• The hosted API also returns JSON.
• Proxies and stealth modes are available.

Limits:

In the self-hosted library, handling JavaScript-heavy pages and bot walls depends on your own settings and proxies. Cloud handles both automatically, but then you are paying per credit again.

4. Apify: Best for ready-made scrapers

Apify is the better choice when a pre-built scraper for your target site already exists.

What it is: Apify is a platform where you run ready-made scrapers from the Apify Store, or your own. Apify calls these programs "Actors".

Best for: Popular sites where someone has already built and maintained a scraper.

Who it suits: Developers, and teams that would rather pick a ready-made scraper than write one.

Pricing: Apify's free plan is $0 with $5 of prepaid usage, no card, and 5 concurrent runs. Starter costs $19/month and includes $19 of prepaid usage, at $0.2 per compute unit, Apify's own billing unit. Each Actor uses either pay-per-event or pay-per-usage pricing, and the Actor's page states which applies.

Strengths:

• A store of Actors.
• An Unblocker for anti-bot costs $1.5 per 1,000 requests on Free and Starter, falling to $1 on Business.
• Residential, datacenter and Google SERP proxies (proxies for collecting Google search results pages).

Limits:

• Cost depends on which Actor you use and its pricing model, so forecasting spend is harder.
• Once usage is exceeded, free-plan users are blocked until the next billing cycle.

If you are also weighing Apify against other options, see our roundup of Apify alternatives.

5. Browse AI: Best for repeated extraction runs in bulk

Browse AI fits best when you need the same extraction run across many pages, including pages you have to click through.

What it is: Browse AI lets you train a robot on a website once. The robot then becomes an endpoint. You send it a URL or search term and get structured JSON back.

Best for: Repeating the same extraction across similar pages, including workflows involving drop-downs, search bars, and forms.ame extraction over many similar pages, rather than one-off fetches.

Who it suits: Business teams can set up extraction workflows without writing code, while developers can integrate those workflows through the API. Test the setup against your target pages to check whether it captures the required data reliably.

Pricing: Browse AI's free plan includes 50 credits a month, with unlimited robots across two websites. Paid plans start at $48/month, or $19/month billed annually. Pricing is credit-based, with every feature on every plan.

Strengths:

• It mimics human actions on the page to scrape dynamic content.
• Bulk runs take up to 50,000 tasks, each with its own URL or inputs.
• It extracts from pages and subpages.

Limits:

• Sites that need residential proxies and CAPTCHA solving are marked Premium and cost more.
• The free plan is small for anything beyond a test.

Compliance: For managers responsible for API keys and extracted data, Browse AI runs on SOC 2 Type II certified infrastructure.

6. Parallel: Best for pay-per-request extraction, including PDFs

Parallel suits AI applications that need webpage and PDF content with usage-based pricing per URL.

What it is: The Parallel Extract API turns any public URL into clean, LLM-optimised markdown.

Best for: AI apps that read both web pages and PDF documents, with spend that tracks usage.

Who it suits: Developers.

Pricing: Parallel Extract costs $1 per 1,000 URLs. Its Build offering includes $5 in monthly credit with a card on file, advertised as up to 5,000 free requests. The credit can be used across APIs, so the available Extract allowance depends on how you use it.

Strengths:

• It handles JavaScript-rendered pages and PDFs.
• You can send up to 20 URLs per call.
• The Build offering lists a rate limit of 600 requests per minute for Search and Extract.

Limits:

• Parallel lists Extract timing as 1–20 seconds. Test latency on your own URLs and freshness settings before relying on that range.
• The published output is markdown. If your pipeline needs another format, confirm it in the docs first.

For a direct comparison, see TinyFish vs Parallel.

7. Oxylabs: Best for enterprise-volume scraping

Oxylabs fits high-volume work where the price per result should fall as you grow.

What it is: Oxylabs is a provider of proxies and web data APIs. Its Scrape product returns clean, structured data from any URL, and one subscription covers all its products.

Best for: Scraping at millions of results, where volume discounts matter more than a free tier.

Who it suits: Developers and enterprise data teams.

Pricing: Oxylabs offers $5 of free welcome credits toward any product. Starter costs $15/month, and VAT may apply. Scrape starts at $0.50 per 1,000 results and drops to $0.25 per 1,000 at 10M+ results.

Strengths:

• Volume discounts that reward scale.
• A single subscription with access to all products.

Limits:

• The free credit is small, so testing at scale means paying early.
• Scrape supports JavaScript rendering. Confirm the applicable throughput limits and test rendering on your target sites before estimating capacity.

Compliance: For enterprise buyers, ISO/IEC 27001:2022 covers Oxylabs' Web API solutions.

How do you choose the right Diffbot alternative?

To choose the right Diffbot alternative, start with what you are building, then answer these questions in order. A manager or a developer can answer each one.

1. What output does your application need? Choose page text or Markdown for content-based workflows, and field-level extraction when you need specific records. If you rely on Diffbot’s Knowledge Graph, assess that replacement separately.
2. Do you need to discover pages or retrieve known URLs? Consider Firecrawl, Crawl4AI, or ZenRows Crawl for site discovery and collection. For known URLs, consider TinyFetch or Parallel. If you already use Diffbot Crawl, compare its plan cost and separately metered extraction before switching.
3. Do the sites block bots? Look at ZenRows, Firecrawl, Apify's Unblocker, or Browse AI's Premium sites.
4. Who will run it day to day? Developers can use any of these. For non-technical teams, look at Browse AI's train-once robots, and at TinyFish through n8n or MCP.
5. What deployment controls do you need? Consider self-hosted options such as Crawl4AI or Firecrawl, or discuss TinyFish’s Enterprise VPC offering. Check how proxies, external models, and other dependencies handle your data.
6. What is your volume and budget? Start from the free option column in the table, then price your expected monthly volume.

Before you commit, run a short test:

• Run 20 to 50 of your real URLs, not the vendor's demo pages.
• Check that the output format matches what your app or spreadsheet needs.
• Check speed against your rate needs.
• Check the cost per page at your expected volume.

Whichever tool you pick, check each site's terms and your own data policies.

Try TinyFetch for free

For higher-volume requirements, contact TinyFish to confirm available limits and pricing. Enterprise options include VPC deployment and ISO 27001.

You need no card and no balance. Within its limits it keeps working at a $0 Wallet balance. New accounts also start with $8 in Wallet funds, so you can try TinyAgent and TinyBrowser before adding a card.