Crawl4AI Is Great for Prototyping. AlterLab Is Built for Scale.
Crawl4AI is free, but you pay in infrastructure and engineering time. AlterLab is a managed API from $0.0002/request — no servers, no maintenance, no surprises.
Why developers leave Crawl4AI
Real pain points from developers who switched to AlterLab
Self-hosting eats engineering time
Crawl4AI requires provisioning servers, managing proxies, handling updates, and debugging infrastructure failures. Every hour spent on ops is an hour not spent on your product.
Proxy costs add up fast
Crawl4AI works best with residential proxies — which cost $50–$400/month at scale. When you add server costs, 'free' open-source often costs more than a managed API.
Limited website compatibility without proxy setup
Without a quality proxy network and challenge resolution, Crawl4AI struggles with protected sites. AlterLab handles this automatically across 5 tiers.
Every feature, side by side
See exactly how AlterLab compares to Crawl4AI across all key features
| Feature | AlterLab Winner | Crawl4AI |
|---|---|---|
Managed hosting No servers to provision or maintain | ||
Automatic scaling Scales with request volume automatically | ||
Uptime SLA Guaranteed availability commitment | 99.9% SLA | Self-managed |
Proxy network Built-in residential proxy pool | 10M+ IPs, 195 countries | Must provide own proxies |
Same features, 60% less
Get the same capabilities at a fraction of the cost. Start with 5,000 free scrapes — no credit card required.
See How Much You Save
Drag the slider to calculate your exact savings vs Crawl4AI
See AlterLab in action
One endpoint. Any website. Results in under 2 seconds. No Crawl4AI complexity.
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Try it yourself with 5,000 free requests
No credit card required. Get your API key in 30 seconds.
Switch from Crawl4AI in 15 minutes
Simple easy migration process. No downtime, no complex setup.
Migration Steps
Code Migration Example
import asyncio
from crawl4ai import AsyncWebCrawler
async def main():
async with AsyncWebCrawler() as crawler:
result = await crawler.arun(
url="https://example.com"
)
print(result.markdown)
asyncio.run(main())import requests
response = requests.post(
"https://api.alterlab.io/v1/scrape",
headers={"X-API-Key": "YOUR_ALTERLAB_KEY"},
json={"url": "https://example.com"}
)
print(response.json()["markdown"])Compatibility Notes
- •AlterLab returns markdown, HTML, plain text, and JSON in a single response
- •No async setup required — standard synchronous HTTP POST
- •Proxy configuration is handled automatically by AlterLab's tier system
- •render_js: true enables full browser rendering for JS-heavy pages
Ready to make the switch?
Start with 5,000 free requests. No credit card required.
Built for production workloads
Real platform metrics — not marketing promises
Start free — no credit card, no commitment
Frequently Asked Questions
More Comparisons
See how AlterLab stacks up against other scraping APIs
10x cost multipliers
Expiring monthly balance
75x cost for hard sites
Complex enterprise tooling
19,000+ Actors to manage
Monthly subscription required
Confusing token types
Enterprise complexity
Enterprise minimums, no developer API
Bandwidth billing, unpredictable costs
Credits expire monthly, complex pricing
Monthly subscription required
Drop Crawl4AI, keep your budget
5,000 free requests. No credit card. Migrate from Crawl4AI in under 5 minutes.