Reference

Pricing Reference

Complete pricing breakdown for AlterLab's scraping API. Simple pay-as-you-go with no subscriptions or hidden fees.

AlterLab Usage Analytics showing request volume and cost breakdowns by tier — Track your API usage and costs in real time from the Usage Analytics dashboard.

AlterLab Billing dashboard showing balance, payment history, and top-up options — Manage your balance, view payment history, and add funds from the Billing page.

Pay-As-You-Go Model

$1 = 5,000 Light requests

Starting at Tier 1 (Curl)

No subscriptions

Pay only for what you use

Balance never expires

Use them whenever you need

$10 minimum

Low barrier to start

Tier Pricing

AlterLab uses an intelligent tier system. We automatically start with the cheapest tier and escalate only when needed.

Tier	Name	Cost	Per $1	Description
1	Curl	$0.0002	5,000	Ultra-fast curl binary for static sites
2	HTTP	$0.0003	3,333	HTTPX with TLS fingerprinting and HTTP/2
3	Stealth	$0.002	500	curl_cffi with Chrome browser impersonation
4	Browser	$0.004$0.0005 on direct egress	250	Playwright browser automation for JS sites
3.5	Light JS	$0.0025	400	Lightweight JS extraction from pre-fetched HTML (no full browser)
5	Captcha	$0.02	50	Browser with AI-powered captcha solving

Auto Mode

With mode: "auto" (default), AlterLab tries Tier 1 first and escalates only if blocked. You only pay for the tier that works.

Direct Browser Pricing

When a Tier 4 (Browser) request succeeds with the page loaded straight from AlterLab's own servers (direct egress), it costs $0.0005 per request ($0.50 per 1,000, 2,000 per $1) instead of $0.004. You are billed by the egress of the attempt that succeeded. AlterLab decides per request whether a direct attempt is worthwhile, so the direct price is never guaranteed in advance.

Successful Tier 4 request	Cost	`billing.egress`
Loaded over direct egress	$0.0005	`"direct"`
Loaded over proxy, including a retry over proxy after a direct attempt	$0.004	`"proxy"`
Bring Your Own Proxy (BYOP), any egress	$0.0032 (BYOP price)	as reported
Request sent with `use_proxy: true`, any egress	$0.004	as reported

How it is billed

The Tier 4 price is held when the request starts. If the successful attempt used direct egress, the difference is refunded to your balance. A request that falls back to the proxy is charged the Tier 4 price once, never for the direct attempt as well. Add-ons such as screenshots and PDFs are charged on top as usual. The response's billing.egress and billing.tier_price_microcents fields show the egress and the tier price applied.

HTTP Method Surcharge

Non-GET requests (POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE) carry a 1.5× surcharge on the base tier cost. This reflects the additional processing required for requests with a body.

Method	Multiplier	Example (Tier 1)
GET, HEAD, OPTIONS	1×	$0.0002
POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE	1.5×	$0.0003

Applies to All Tiers

The 1.5× surcharge stacks with BYOP discount. For example, a POST request at Tier 3 with BYOP costs $0.002 × 1.5 × 0.8 = $0.0024.

Add-on Costs

Optional features that add to the base tier cost:

Feature	Additional Cost	Notes
JavaScript Rendering	Tier 4 ($0.004)	Forces Tier 4 minimum — no extra surcharge
Screenshot	+$0.0002	Requires JS rendering
Browser Actions	Included	Included in the Tier 4 price, with no per-action fee, within the shared action time budget
Screenshot Action	+$0.0002	Per captured image. Failed captures are free
PDF Generation	+$0.0004	Requires JS rendering
PDF Extraction	+$0.0006	Extract text from PDF files
OCR	+$0.001	Refunded if no images found
Premium Proxy	+$0.0002	High-quality residential proxies
AI Extraction	+$0.001	Schema/prompt-based extraction
Embeddings	+$0.001	Generate vector embeddings for RAG pipelines
Markdown Output	Free	Convert HTML to Markdown
Caching	Free	Cache hits are free
Authenticated Scraping (BYOS)	Free	No surcharge for cookies/headers/sessions

Cost Calculation

Total cost = Base Tier Cost + Add-ons

Bash

Base = Tier Cost × (POST/PUT/PATCH/DELETE ? 1.5 : 1.0)
Total = Base
      + (screenshot ? $0.0002 : 0)
      + (generate_pdf ? $0.0004 : 0)
      + (ocr ? $0.001 : 0)
      + (use_proxy ? $0.0002 : 0)
      + (extraction ? $0.001 : 0)
      + (embeddings ? $0.001 : 0)
# render_js forces Tier 4 ($0.004) — no extra surcharge
# Tier 4 success over direct egress: $0.0005 instead of $0.004
#   (not with BYOP or use_proxy; see Direct Browser Pricing)
# markdown is free
# authenticated scraping (BYOS) is free — no surcharge
# BYOP gives 20% off the final total

Example 1: Basic HTML Scrape

Static page, no JS needed

$0.0002 (Tier 1)

Example 2: JavaScript + Screenshot

SPA with screenshot capture

$0.004 + $0.0002 = $0.0042

Example 3: Full Extraction

JS rendering + AI extraction + premium proxy

$0.004 + $0.001 + $0.0002 = $0.0052

BYOP Discount

Bring Your Own Proxy (BYOP) gives you a 20% discount on all requests:

20% off

When using your own proxies

Tier	Standard	With BYOP	Discount
Tier 1 (Curl)	$0.0002	$0.00016	20%
Tier 2 (HTTP)	$0.0003	$0.00024	20%
Tier 3 (Stealth)	$0.002	$0.0016	20%
Tier 4 (Browser)	$0.004	$0.0032	20%
Tier 5 (Captcha)	$0.02	$0.016	20%

Learn More

See the Bring Your Own Proxy guide to set up BYOP.

BYOS — Authenticated Scraping

Bring Your Own Session (BYOS) lets you inject your own cookies, headers, and sessions for authenticated scraping — at no extra cost.

No surcharge

Same per-request pricing as regular scrapes

Custom cookies

Inject session cookies for logged-in access

Custom headers

Add auth tokens, API keys, or any headers

Stored sessions

Reusable encrypted sessions for repeated scrapes

BYOS + BYOP Stack

BYOS and BYOP can be combined — use your own sessions with your own proxies for the maximum discount with authenticated access. See the Authenticated Scraping guide to get started.

Extract Endpoint Pricing

The Extract API (POST /api/v1/extract) has a separate cost model from scraping. Since you supply the content, there is no scraping tier cost.

Scenario	Cost	Notes
Base extraction (algorithmic)	$0.0025 / call	Applies to all /v1/extract calls regardless of method
LLM extraction invocation	+$0.001 / call	Added when `extraction_prompt` is provided
Large content surcharge	+$0.0025 / call	Content exceeding 200,000 characters (~50K tokens)
LLM token cost (BYOK)	Provider rates	Billed by your provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenRouter, Groq) — not by AlterLab

No scraping cost on Extract

The Extract endpoint accepts content you already have — no URL fetching, no proxy usage, no browser rendering. The only AlterLab cost is the extraction fee above. This makes it 2–10x cheaper than a combined scrape + extract call for the same data.

Cost comparison example

Extracting product data from 100 pages:

Scrape + algorithmic extract (inline)

100 × (T2 scrape $0.002 + extract $0.0025)

$0.45

Extract only (you already have HTML)

100 × $0.0025

$0.25

See the Extraction Profiles guide and BYOK Extraction guide for setup and usage details.

Concurrency Tiers

Your concurrent request limit scales with your account balance:

Balance	Tier	Concurrent Requests
$0 - $5	Free	3
$5 - $50	Basic	10
$50 - $200	Growth	15
$200 - $500	Scale	25
$500+	High Volume	50

Need More?

Crawl Limits

Crawl operations (multi-page site crawls) have per-account slot and page limits that scale with your account balance:

Balance	Tier	Concurrent Crawl Slots	Max Pages per Crawl
$0 – $5	Free	3	500
$5 – $50	Basic	5	5,000
$50 – $200	Growth	8	20,000
$200 – $500	Scale	20	50,000
$500+	High Volume	40	100,000

Per-Page Pricing

Crawl pages are billed at the same per-request rate as individual scrapes. Each page is charged at whatever tier successfully fetches it.

Auto-Recharge

Auto-recharge automatically tops up your balance when it falls below a threshold, so your scraping jobs never stall due to an empty account.

Set a threshold

e.g. recharge when balance drops below $5

Choose an amount

e.g. add $20 each time

Never run dry

Charged automatically to your saved payment method

Configure in Dashboard

Set up auto-recharge from Dashboard → Billing → Auto-Recharge. A saved payment method is required.

Promo codes add free balance or provide a discount on your next top-up. They are case-insensitive and single-use per account.

Go to Billing

Navigate to Dashboard → Billing.

Click “Redeem Promo Code”

Enter your code in the promo field and click Redeem.

Balance credited instantly

The promo balance is added immediately and shown in your billing history.

Promo Code Rules

Codes are single-use per account and may have an expiry date. Balance added via promo codes never expires. Codes cannot be combined with each other.

Free Tier

Up to 5,000 free requests

One-time $1 starter balance: about 5,000 Light, 500 Protected or 250 Dynamic requests. No credit card required to start

Feature	Free Tier Limit
Starting balance	$1 starter balance: up to 5,000 free requests (about 5,000 Light, 500 Protected or 250 Dynamic requests)
Concurrent requests	1
API access	Full (all endpoints, all tiers)
Max batch size	10 URLs
Scheduler	1 schedule, minimum 1-hour interval
Balance expiry	Never (no time limit)

Pricing Examples

Small Business

10,000 pages/month

Mix of static and JS-rendered pages

~$3-5/month

E-commerce Monitoring

100,000 products/month

Daily price checks, mostly static pages

~$20-30/month

Data Aggregator

1M pages/month

Mixed workload with BYOP

~$50-100/month with BYOP

Research Rate Limits

Last updated: June 2026

Reference

Pricing Reference

Complete pricing breakdown for AlterLab's scraping API. Simple pay-as-you-go with no subscriptions or hidden fees.

Pay-As-You-Go Model

$1 = 5,000 Light requests

Starting at Tier 1 (Curl)

No subscriptions

Pay only for what you use

Balance never expires

Use them whenever you need

$10 minimum

Low barrier to start

Tier Pricing

AlterLab uses an intelligent tier system. We automatically start with the cheapest tier and escalate only when needed.

Tier	Name	Cost	Per $1	Description
1	Curl	$0.0002	5,000	Ultra-fast curl binary for static sites
2	HTTP	$0.0003	3,333	HTTPX with TLS fingerprinting and HTTP/2
3	Stealth	$0.002	500	curl_cffi with Chrome browser impersonation
4	Browser	$0.004$0.0005 on direct egress	250	Playwright browser automation for JS sites
3.5	Light JS	$0.0025	400	Lightweight JS extraction from pre-fetched HTML (no full browser)
5	Captcha	$0.02	50	Browser with AI-powered captcha solving

Auto Mode

With mode: "auto" (default), AlterLab tries Tier 1 first and escalates only if blocked. You only pay for the tier that works.

Direct Browser Pricing

Successful Tier 4 request	Cost	`billing.egress`
Loaded over direct egress	$0.0005	`"direct"`
Loaded over proxy, including a retry over proxy after a direct attempt	$0.004	`"proxy"`
Bring Your Own Proxy (BYOP), any egress	$0.0032 (BYOP price)	as reported
Request sent with `use_proxy: true`, any egress	$0.004	as reported

How it is billed

HTTP Method Surcharge

Non-GET requests (POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE) carry a 1.5× surcharge on the base tier cost. This reflects the additional processing required for requests with a body.

Method	Multiplier	Example (Tier 1)
GET, HEAD, OPTIONS	1×	$0.0002
POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE	1.5×	$0.0003

Applies to All Tiers

The 1.5× surcharge stacks with BYOP discount. For example, a POST request at Tier 3 with BYOP costs $0.002 × 1.5 × 0.8 = $0.0024.

Add-on Costs

Optional features that add to the base tier cost:

Feature	Additional Cost	Notes
JavaScript Rendering	Tier 4 ($0.004)	Forces Tier 4 minimum — no extra surcharge
Screenshot	+$0.0002	Requires JS rendering
Browser Actions	Included	Included in the Tier 4 price, with no per-action fee, within the shared action time budget
Screenshot Action	+$0.0002	Per captured image. Failed captures are free
PDF Generation	+$0.0004	Requires JS rendering
PDF Extraction	+$0.0006	Extract text from PDF files
OCR	+$0.001	Refunded if no images found
Premium Proxy	+$0.0002	High-quality residential proxies
AI Extraction	+$0.001	Schema/prompt-based extraction
Embeddings	+$0.001	Generate vector embeddings for RAG pipelines
Markdown Output	Free	Convert HTML to Markdown
Caching	Free	Cache hits are free
Authenticated Scraping (BYOS)	Free	No surcharge for cookies/headers/sessions

Cost Calculation

Total cost = Base Tier Cost + Add-ons

Bash

Base = Tier Cost × (POST/PUT/PATCH/DELETE ? 1.5 : 1.0)
Total = Base
      + (screenshot ? $0.0002 : 0)
      + (generate_pdf ? $0.0004 : 0)
      + (ocr ? $0.001 : 0)
      + (use_proxy ? $0.0002 : 0)
      + (extraction ? $0.001 : 0)
      + (embeddings ? $0.001 : 0)
# render_js forces Tier 4 ($0.004) — no extra surcharge
# Tier 4 success over direct egress: $0.0005 instead of $0.004
#   (not with BYOP or use_proxy; see Direct Browser Pricing)
# markdown is free
# authenticated scraping (BYOS) is free — no surcharge
# BYOP gives 20% off the final total

Example 1: Basic HTML Scrape

Static page, no JS needed

$0.0002 (Tier 1)

Example 2: JavaScript + Screenshot

SPA with screenshot capture

$0.004 + $0.0002 = $0.0042

Example 3: Full Extraction

JS rendering + AI extraction + premium proxy

$0.004 + $0.001 + $0.0002 = $0.0052

BYOP Discount

Bring Your Own Proxy (BYOP) gives you a 20% discount on all requests:

20% off

When using your own proxies

Tier	Standard	With BYOP	Discount
Tier 1 (Curl)	$0.0002	$0.00016	20%
Tier 2 (HTTP)	$0.0003	$0.00024	20%
Tier 3 (Stealth)	$0.002	$0.0016	20%
Tier 4 (Browser)	$0.004	$0.0032	20%
Tier 5 (Captcha)	$0.02	$0.016	20%

Learn More

See the Bring Your Own Proxy guide to set up BYOP.

BYOS — Authenticated Scraping

Bring Your Own Session (BYOS) lets you inject your own cookies, headers, and sessions for authenticated scraping — at no extra cost.

No surcharge

Same per-request pricing as regular scrapes

Custom cookies

Inject session cookies for logged-in access

Custom headers

Add auth tokens, API keys, or any headers

Stored sessions

Reusable encrypted sessions for repeated scrapes

BYOS + BYOP Stack

BYOS and BYOP can be combined — use your own sessions with your own proxies for the maximum discount with authenticated access. See the Authenticated Scraping guide to get started.

Extract Endpoint Pricing

The Extract API (POST /api/v1/extract) has a separate cost model from scraping. Since you supply the content, there is no scraping tier cost.

Scenario	Cost	Notes
Base extraction (algorithmic)	$0.0025 / call	Applies to all /v1/extract calls regardless of method
LLM extraction invocation	+$0.001 / call	Added when `extraction_prompt` is provided
Large content surcharge	+$0.0025 / call	Content exceeding 200,000 characters (~50K tokens)
LLM token cost (BYOK)	Provider rates	Billed by your provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenRouter, Groq) — not by AlterLab

No scraping cost on Extract

Cost comparison example

Extracting product data from 100 pages:

Scrape + algorithmic extract (inline)

100 × (T2 scrape $0.002 + extract $0.0025)

$0.45

Extract only (you already have HTML)

100 × $0.0025

$0.25

See the Extraction Profiles guide and BYOK Extraction guide for setup and usage details.

Concurrency Tiers

Your concurrent request limit scales with your account balance:

Balance	Tier	Concurrent Requests
$0 - $5	Free	3
$5 - $50	Basic	10
$50 - $200	Growth	15
$200 - $500	Scale	25
$500+	High Volume	50

Need More?

Crawl Limits

Crawl operations (multi-page site crawls) have per-account slot and page limits that scale with your account balance:

Balance	Tier	Concurrent Crawl Slots	Max Pages per Crawl
$0 – $5	Free	3	500
$5 – $50	Basic	5	5,000
$50 – $200	Growth	8	20,000
$200 – $500	Scale	20	50,000
$500+	High Volume	40	100,000

Per-Page Pricing

Crawl pages are billed at the same per-request rate as individual scrapes. Each page is charged at whatever tier successfully fetches it.

Auto-Recharge

Auto-recharge automatically tops up your balance when it falls below a threshold, so your scraping jobs never stall due to an empty account.

Set a threshold

e.g. recharge when balance drops below $5

Choose an amount

e.g. add $20 each time

Never run dry

Charged automatically to your saved payment method

Configure in Dashboard

Set up auto-recharge from Dashboard → Billing → Auto-Recharge. A saved payment method is required.

Promo codes add free balance or provide a discount on your next top-up. They are case-insensitive and single-use per account.

Go to Billing

Navigate to Dashboard → Billing.

Click “Redeem Promo Code”

Enter your code in the promo field and click Redeem.

Balance credited instantly

The promo balance is added immediately and shown in your billing history.

Promo Code Rules

Codes are single-use per account and may have an expiry date. Balance added via promo codes never expires. Codes cannot be combined with each other.

Free Tier

Up to 5,000 free requests

One-time $1 starter balance: about 5,000 Light, 500 Protected or 250 Dynamic requests. No credit card required to start

Feature	Free Tier Limit
Starting balance	$1 starter balance: up to 5,000 free requests (about 5,000 Light, 500 Protected or 250 Dynamic requests)
Concurrent requests	1
API access	Full (all endpoints, all tiers)
Max batch size	10 URLs
Scheduler	1 schedule, minimum 1-hour interval
Balance expiry	Never (no time limit)

Pricing Examples

Small Business

10,000 pages/month

Mix of static and JS-rendered pages

~$3-5/month

E-commerce Monitoring

100,000 products/month

Daily price checks, mostly static pages

~$20-30/month

Data Aggregator

1M pages/month

Mixed workload with BYOP

~$50-100/month with BYOP

Research Rate Limits

Last updated: June 2026

Pricing Reference

Pay-As-You-Go Model

Tier Pricing

Direct Browser Pricing

HTTP Method Surcharge

Add-on Costs

Cost Calculation

Example 1: Basic HTML Scrape

Example 2: JavaScript + Screenshot

Example 3: Full Extraction

BYOP Discount

BYOS — Authenticated Scraping

Extract Endpoint Pricing

Cost comparison example

Concurrency Tiers

Crawl Limits

Auto-Recharge

Promo Codes

Go to Billing

Click “Redeem Promo Code”

Balance credited instantly

Free Tier

Pricing Examples

Small Business

E-commerce Monitoring

Data Aggregator

Pricing Reference

Pay-As-You-Go Model

Tier Pricing

Direct Browser Pricing

HTTP Method Surcharge

Add-on Costs

Cost Calculation

Example 1: Basic HTML Scrape

Example 2: JavaScript + Screenshot

Example 3: Full Extraction

BYOP Discount

BYOS — Authenticated Scraping

Extract Endpoint Pricing

Cost comparison example

Concurrency Tiers

Crawl Limits

Auto-Recharge

Promo Codes

Go to Billing

Click “Redeem Promo Code”

Balance credited instantly

Free Tier

Pricing Examples

Small Business

E-commerce Monitoring

Data Aggregator