Octoparse alternative: ReefAPI vs Octoparse
Octoparse alternative: ReefAPI is an Octoparse alternative when your target maps to a ready-made API and you want code-first JSON. Octoparse is the better choice when you want a no-code visual builder for arbitrary pages and one-off extraction tasks.
ReefAPI vs Octoparse
| Dimension | ReefAPI | Octoparse | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Product model | Ready-made endpoints you call from code and get parsed JSON. | A no-code desktop and cloud tool where you point at pages and build extraction with a visual workflow builder. | Depends |
| Who it's for | Developers and AI agents building software on top of a data API. | Analysts and non-developers who want point-and-click extraction without writing code. | Alternative |
| Pricing model | One shared credit pool across every engine. | Tier-and-task based plans, with task, concurrency and cloud limits per tier. Verify current plans on Octoparse. | ReefAPI |
| Failed or blocked calls | Not charged — failed or blocked ReefAPI calls are not charged, except verified SHEIN NOT_FOUND on product/detail and price (4 credits). | Tasks and cloud runtime count against your plan regardless of what a run returns. | ReefAPI |
| What you manage | Nothing; anti-bot and proxies are handled server-side per engine. | You build, maintain and run extraction workflows, and tune settings when a site changes. | ReefAPI |
| Best fit | Supported sources you want as JSON in software. | No-code visual extraction of arbitrary sites. | Alternative |
What each side actually charges
Both columns are published prices, not quotes. Ours are generated from the same plan file the checkout charges against, so they cannot drift from what you would pay. Octoparse’s were read off Octoparse’s own pricing page on and are reproduced with their plan names and their units. Prices change; check the linked page before you commit.
Octoparse's unit is a TASK — a saved scraping workflow you build in a desktop app — plus a number of concurrent cloud runs. It is not an API call and there is no honest conversion to credits. Rows are capped only on the free plan. This is a different kind of product from ours: you build the scraper and we ship the endpoint. Note also that the two paid prices are the billed-annually rates; the month-to-month prices were not displayed on the page we read and we will not derive them.
| Plan | Price | Included | Per 1,000 credits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 1,000 credits at signup, no card | — |
| Pro | $15 / mo | 10,000 credits / mo | $1.50 |
| Ultra | $50 / mo | 50,000 credits / mo | $1.00 |
| Mega | $100 / mo | 125,000 credits / mo | $0.80 |
| Enterprise | $200 / mo | 300,000 credits / mo | $0.67 |
| Plan | Price | Included |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Free forever, no credit card: 10 tasks, 50,000 rows of data export per month, 2 concurrent runs, 1 device, 1 user, history of the last 5 runs, export to Excel, CSV, JSON, HTML, XML and to MySQL, SQL, PostgreSQL and Oracle. |
| Standard | $69 / mo, billed annually | 100 tasks, 3 concurrent cloud runs — the page states 16% savings against monthly billing but does not display a month-to-month price |
| Professional | $249 / mo, billed annually | 250 tasks, 20 concurrent cloud runs — rows are unlimited on paid plans; 5-day money-back guarantee |
| Enterprise | Not published | Contact sales |
| Residential proxies | $3 / GB | Add-on |
| Pay-per-result templates | $0.001 to $3 per thousand results | Add-on — CAPTCHA solving is $1 to $1.50 per thousand |
| Managed services | Crawler setup from $399, data service from $599 | One-off and subscription services |
$0.67–$1.50 / 1,000 credits on monthly billing, or $0.33–$0.75 / 1,000 credits paid yearly (−50%). Credits roll over and never expire, and every engine draws from the same balance. Failed calls are free except verified SHEIN NOT_FOUND on product/detail and price (4 credits). Credits are not requests: measured across 1,124 catalog actions on 2026-08-25, 67% cost one credit, 18% cost two and 5% cost three.
Not stated anywhere on the pricing page. The vendor help-centre pricing article we tried returned a 404, so we have no second source and will not guess. On our side a failed or blocked call is not charged except verified SHEIN NOT_FOUND on product/detail and price (4 credits).
Their free plan is genuinely large and permanent: 50,000 exported rows a month, forever, without a card, against our 1,000 credits once. And for a target with no ReefAPI engine, a no-code Octoparse task is something a non-developer can build in an afternoon — we have no answer to that at all. If nobody on your team writes code, the comparison ends there and it does not end in our favour.
Octoparse prices read from octoparse.com/pricing on . ReefAPI prices from reefapi.com/pricing, generated at build time.
When ReefAPI is the better fit
- Your target is covered by a ReefAPI engine and you want JSON from one API call, not a desktop workflow.
- You want one shared credit pool and timeout and blocked calls to be free.
- You are building software or AI agents rather than running manual extraction tasks.
When the alternative is better
- You prefer a no-code visual builder over writing code.
- Your target is not in ReefAPI's supported engine list and you want point-and-click extraction.
Real ReefAPI snapshot
ReefAPI captured this live web-extract example on . It is committed in the SEO snapshot store and used as page evidence, not generated copy.
{
"method": "POST",
"url": "https://api.reefapi.com/web-extract/v1/scrape",
"headers": {
"x-api-key": "$REEF_KEY",
"content-type": "application/json"
},
"body": {
"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping",
"formats": [
"markdown",
"metadata"
]
}
}{
"ok": true,
"meta": {
"api": "web-extract",
"endpoint": "scrape",
"mode": "live",
"latency_ms": 580.8,
"record_count": 1,
"bytes": 235941,
"cache_hit": false,
"browserless": true,
"ssrf_guarded": true,
"final_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping",
"formats": [
"markdown",
"metadata"
],
"extraction_method": "trafilatura"
},
"data": {
"final_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping",
"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping",
"title": "Web scraping - Wikipedia",
"metadata": {
"title": "Web scraping - Wikipedia",
"description": null,
"canonical": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping",
"lang": "en",
"site_name": "Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.",
"author": "Contributors to Wikimedia projects",
"published_at": "2005-09-17T18:57:30Z",
"modified_at": null,
"section": null,
"keywords": [],
"favicon": "https://en.wikipedia.org/static/apple-touch/wikipedia.png",
"og": {
"title": "Web scraping - Wikipedia",
"type": "website"
}
},
"extraction": {
"method": "trafilatura",
"rendered": false,
"confidence": "high",
"content_chars": 25849
},
"markdown": "**Web scraping**, **web harvesting**, or **web data extraction** is [data scraping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_scraping) used for [extracting data](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_extraction) from [websites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website).<sup>[\\[1\\]](https://en.wikipedia.org#cite_note-1)</sup> Web scraping software may directly access the [World Wide Web](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web) using the [Hypertext Transfer Protocol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol) or a web browser. While web scraping can be done manually by a software user,"
}
}What we found when we called our own endpoints
Every comparison page on the internet will tell you its own product is good. These are numbers we got by calling ReefAPI and writing down what came back, including where the answer went against us. Each one is dated and each one is repeatable against the same endpoint.
Zillow will tell you a home sold and when, but not for how much
Against us, and the first thing anyone building comps will check. status=sold returned 41 rows in Austin and 41 in Seattle with sold_date on every one and sold_price_usd null on every one. Opening those zpids with property_detail did not rescue it: list price came back 0, last_sold_price_usd null, price_history an empty array. For the figure, use another source — Redfin's sold search returned a price on every row in the same city, and we say so on our own page rather than letting you discover it.
Two date formats in one engine
The kind of thing that survives testing and dies in production: last_sold_date on a search row is ISO — 2015-03-25 — while sold_date on a sold row is August-21-2026, and price_history dates are ISO again. Normalize on the way in. We publish it rather than let it be your incident.
brand is null on every search row
Measured across three unrelated categories: brand was empty on all 60 search rows. It is filled on product_detail — the same items came back as Ninja and Martha Stewart there. If you are building a brand-share report the grid alone cannot do it, and you have to enrich. That is a real extra call and a real extra credit, so we would rather it was on the comparison page than in your invoice.
Questions developers ask before switching
Is ReefAPI an Octoparse alternative?
For developers whose targets map to supported engines, yes: ReefAPI returns JSON from a single API call. Octoparse is the better fit if you want a no-code visual builder and do not want to write code.
Does ReefAPI have a visual point-and-click builder?
No. ReefAPI is a code-first data API; there is no visual workflow builder. Octoparse is designed around that no-code experience, which is its main appeal for non-developers.
Are the Octoparse pricing details on this page exact?
No. Octoparse's task and tier limits change, so this page keeps them general and links to Octoparse for current plans.
Source notes and hedges
Competitor pricing, quotas, free tiers and feature limits change. This page uses official public pages for product-positioning claims and keeps unstable commercial details general.
- Octoparse homepage: Used for no-code visual scraper positioning.
- Octoparse pricing: Used for the task-and-tier model; exact prices are not repeated.
Try the relevant ReefAPI endpoints with 1,000 free credits, or open the docs to inspect params, examples and live proof before wiring them into production.