ParseHub alternative: ReefAPI vs ParseHub
ParseHub alternative: ReefAPI is a ParseHub alternative when your target is a supported engine and you want clean JSON from one call. ParseHub is the better choice when you want a no-code point-and-click project for arbitrary sites.
ReefAPI vs ParseHub
| Dimension | ReefAPI | ParseHub | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Product model | Ready-made endpoints you call from code and get parsed JSON. | A no-code tool where you select page elements to build an extraction project, then run or schedule it. | Depends |
| Who it's for | Developers and AI agents building on a data API. | Users who want to click through a page to define what gets extracted, without code. | Alternative |
| Pricing model | One shared credit pool across every engine. | Project-and-page based plans, with page, speed and data-retention limits per tier. Verify current plans on ParseHub. | 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). | Pages and runs 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 and maintain each project and fix it when a target site changes. | ReefAPI |
| Best fit | Supported sources you want as JSON in software. | No-code point-and-click projects for 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. ParseHub’s were read off ParseHub’s own pricing page on and are reproduced with their plan names and their units. Prices change; check the linked page before you commit.
ParseHub's unit is pages per RUN of a project you build in a desktop application, not API calls, so there is no conversion to credits and the two tables are price lists rather than a comparison. One thing to know before you commit: the pricing bundle we read these numbers from carries a last-modified date of 2025-07-14, so the prices have not been touched in about thirteen months. We checked whether the product is still operating — parsehub.com, its pricing page and its Stripe-wired checkout all returned HTTP 200 on 2026-08-29 — but a price list left alone for over a year is worth confirming with them directly.
| 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 | The Everyone plan: free, no credit card, 200 pages per run, 5 PUBLIC projects, 14-day data retention, limited support, no IP rotation or scheduling. Their own tooltip warns that the design of a public project and any data scraped from it may be shared publicly without notice. |
| Standard | $189 / mo | 10,000 pages per run, 20 private projects — or $155/mo billed quarterly; 14-day retention; 200 pages in about 10 minutes |
| Professional | $599 / mo | Unlimited pages per run, 120 private projects — or $505/mo billed quarterly; 30-day retention; 200 pages in under 2 minutes |
| ParseHub Plus | Not published | Enterprise, contact sales |
$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.
The free tier is generous for a one-off job: 200 pages per run with no card and no code, and a point-and-click desktop builder that needs no developer. That is a capability we do not have. On price the comparison runs the other way and we will say so plainly rather than pretend it is close: their Standard plan at $189 a month is the most expensive entry tier of any vendor on this site, roughly twelve times our $15 Pro plan — but they are selling a scraper builder and we are selling endpoints, so the two numbers are not really competing for the same budget.
ParseHub prices read from parsehub.com/pricing on . ReefAPI prices from reefapi.com/pricing, generated at build time.
When ReefAPI is the better fit
- Your target is covered by a ReefAPI engine and you want JSON from one API call, not a visual project.
- You want one shared credit pool and timeout and blocked calls to be free.
- You are building software or AI agents rather than running scheduled no-code projects.
When the alternative is better
- You prefer building a no-code point-and-click project over writing code.
- Your target is not in ReefAPI's supported engine list.
Real ReefAPI snapshot
ReefAPI captured this live web-extract example on . It is committed in the SEO snapshot store and used as page evidence, not generated copy.
{
"method": "POST",
"url": "https://api.reefapi.com/web-extract/v1/scrape",
"headers": {
"x-api-key": "$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.
A reported total is not a reachable total, and we print the ceiling
One popular query reported between 175,556 and 193,895 gigs, the number moving across four calls in the same afternoon — which is how you know it is an estimate rather than a count. Paging told a different story: offset 0 with limit 96 returned 96 rows, offset 96 returned 14 more, and offsets 192, 288, 384 and 456 each returned zero with stop_reason page_cap. About 110 rows are reachable per query against a claimed 190,000. Treat each query as a sample of roughly a hundred and get breadth from more queries, not deeper paging.
The response carries its own completeness score, including when the score is bad
500 rows against a reported 8,945 is 5.6%, and completeness_pct is in every result rather than left for you to work out. No strategy we measured gets a heavily-reviewed business anywhere near whole. We would rather publish 5.6% on a sales page than let you find it in production.
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.
Questions developers ask before switching
Is ReefAPI a ParseHub alternative?
For developers whose targets map to supported engines, yes: ReefAPI returns JSON from a single call. ParseHub is the better fit if you want to build a no-code point-and-click project instead.
Does ReefAPI let me click on a page to pick fields like ParseHub?
No. ReefAPI is a code-first API with no visual selector; each engine already returns a defined schema. ParseHub's point-and-click project builder is its core, no-code strength.
Are the ParseHub pricing details on this page exact?
No. ParseHub's page and project limits change, so this page keeps them general and links to ParseHub 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.
- ParseHub homepage: Used for no-code point-and-click scraper positioning.
- ParseHub pricing: Used for the project-and-page 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.