Oxylabs alternative: ReefAPI vs Oxylabs
Oxylabs alternative: ReefAPI is an Oxylabs alternative when supported engines already provide the data as JSON. Oxylabs is the better choice when you need high-scale scraping infrastructure and result-based scraping for arbitrary targets.
ReefAPI vs Oxylabs
| Dimension | ReefAPI | Oxylabs | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Product model | Ready-made, source-specific endpoints that return parsed data. | A Web Scraper API for public sites — with dedicated modes for search and e-commerce targets — plus large residential and datacenter proxy networks. | Depends |
| Pricing model | One shared credit pool across every engine. | Web Scraper API uses result-based billing; proxy networks are billed separately by traffic. Verify current plans and result definitions on Oxylabs. | 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). | You are billed per successful result; check each product's definition of a billable result. | ReefAPI |
| What you manage | Nothing; the engine owns parsing, proxies and anti-bot. | You configure targets and requests, and for the proxy products you manage pools and sessions. | ReefAPI |
| Scale | Managed engines sized for typical production traffic. | Enterprise-grade proxy and scraping infrastructure built for very high volume. | Alternative |
| Best fit | Supported sources you want as JSON with one account. | High-scale web scraping for targets outside ReefAPI's catalog. | 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. Oxylabs’s were read off Oxylabs’s own pricing page on and are reproduced with their plan names and their units. Prices change; check the linked page before you commit.
An Oxylabs result is one returned record and the rate per 1,000 depends on which site you hit and whether JavaScript rendering was needed. A ReefAPI credit is one call to an engine. Note also that their navigation's from $0.25 per 1,000 figure is not obtainable from any published self-serve tier — the lowest rate actually printed is $0.40 on Advanced, for Amazon, without rendering.
| 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 trial of up to 2,000 results, no credit card required, rate-limited to 10 requests per second. The residential-proxy trial is gated behind a Book a demo form instead. |
| Micro | $49 / mo | up to 98,000 results — $0.50 per 1,000 for Amazon, $1.00 Google, $1.15 other, $1.35 with JS rendering |
| Starter | $99 / mo | up to 220,000 results — $0.45 / $0.90 / $1.10 / $1.30 per 1,000 on the same four rates |
| Advanced | $249 / mo | up to 622,500 results — $0.40 / $0.80 / $0.95 / $1.25 per 1,000; 50 requests per second |
| Enterprise | Not published | Contact sales — their navigation advertises from $0.25 per 1,000 results, but no published tier reaches it |
| Residential proxy | $6 down to $2.50 per GB | $30 for 5 GB up to $2,500 for 1 TB — no pay-as-you-go rate published |
| Datacenter proxy | Dedicated from $1.20 / IP, shared from $0.70 / IP | Shared rotating pay-per-GB from $0.44 / GB — 5 free shared IPs, no card |
$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.
🔴 Charged, for target-side errors — and this is the one row in this whole comparison set where the phrase "pay for success" means something narrower than it sounds. Oxylabs' FAQ states that they do not charge for attempts that return 5xx and 6xx status codes caused by their own system, and that "all scraping attempts that return 2xx or 4xx status codes are counted as successful." A 403 or a 404 from the target site is billed. On our side a blocked call is not charged, whatever the target returned.
Their published rates of $0.40 to $1.35 per 1,000 results sit below our monthly credit rates for comparable work at the Advanced tier, and their proxy network and geographic footprint are far larger than anything we run. Their free trial hands you up to 2,000 results without a card. Against that, their free trial expires and our signup credits do not, and their failed-call policy is genuinely worse than ours rather than merely different.
Oxylabs prices read from oxylabs.io — Web Scraper API pricing on . ReefAPI prices from reefapi.com/pricing, generated at build time.
When ReefAPI is the better fit
- Your data target is covered by ReefAPI and you want clean JSON from one account.
- You want to mix Amazon, Google Search and other data APIs under one credit pool.
- You would rather not reason about per-target billable-result definitions.
When the alternative is better
- You need broad, high-scale web scraping for targets outside ReefAPI's catalog.
- You want Oxylabs' result-based scraper billing and enterprise proxy ecosystem.
Real ReefAPI snapshot
ReefAPI captured this live amazon example on . It is committed in the SEO snapshot store and used as page evidence, not generated copy.
{
"method": "POST",
"url": "https://api.reefapi.com/amazon/v1/search",
"headers": {
"x-api-key": "$REEF_KEY",
"content-type": "application/json"
},
"body": {
"query": "laptop"
}
}{
"ok": true,
"meta": {
"api": "amazon",
"endpoint": "search",
"mode": "live",
"latency_ms": 2675.3,
"record_count": 16,
"bytes": 1677407,
"cache_hit": false,
"completeness_pct": 100,
"marketplace": "com",
"currency_code": "USD",
"pagination": {
"page": 1,
"has_more": true
},
"charged_credits": 1
},
"data": {
"results": [
{
"asin": "B0H5BTZFC1",
"title": "15.6 Inch Laptop Computer, N4020, 4GB DDR4 RAM, 128GB eMMC,with Windows 11",
"brand": null,
"price": 229.99,
"currency": "$",
"rating": 4.8,
"rating_count": 2024,
"image": "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/718nDryvGTL._AC_UY218_.jpg",
"sponsored": false,
"coupon": null,
"campaign": null,
"availability": null
},
{
"asin": "B0HFNC155T",
"title": "15.6 Inch Laptop with FHD display, 6GB RAM 128GB Storage Expandable 512GB",
"brand": null,
"price": 259.99,
"currency": "$",
"rating": 4.9,
"rating_count": 30,
"image": "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81xYyz6RqhL._AC_UY218_.jpg",
"sponsored": false,
"coupon": null,
"campaign": "Limited time deal",
"availability": null
}
],
"page": 1
}
}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.
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.
gtin-to-asin takes the upc, not the gtin
product/detail prints gtin, upc, ean, isbn and a barcodes array. Feeding the 14-digit gtin back into gtin-to-asin returned zero matches on two different products; feeding the 12-digit upc out of the same response returned the correct ASIN as the first match, both times. Use upc for the round trip. That is the kind of detail that costs an afternoon if nobody writes it down.
The United Kingdom site refused us on both attempts, and neither call was charged
Two separate calls to the UK site, each about half a minute, both came back TARGET_BLOCKED. The US, German, Indian and Japanese sites all answered in one to two seconds the same afternoon. The country list has sixty-odd entries and we measured five of them. Two things follow: measure the country you actually need before you commit to it, and note that a blocked call cost nothing — which is why our per-call price does not move with how hard the target is.
Questions developers ask before switching
Is ReefAPI an Oxylabs alternative?
For supported sources, yes: ReefAPI returns parsed JSON with proxies handled for you. Oxylabs is the better fit for high-scale scraping of arbitrary targets and for standalone proxy networks.
How does result-based billing compare to ReefAPI credits?
Oxylabs' Web Scraper API bills per successful result, and each product defines what counts as billable. ReefAPI bills per call from one shared credit pool and does not charge for failed or blocked calls except verified SHEIN NOT_FOUND on product/detail and price (4 credits).
Are the Oxylabs pricing details on this page exact?
No. Oxylabs' plans and result definitions change, so this page keeps them general and links to Oxylabs for current terms.
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.
- Oxylabs Web Scraper API: Used for public-site, search and e-commerce target positioning.
- Oxylabs billing docs: Used for the result-based billing wording; 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.