Free web scraping APIs for AI agents, compared

Two scraping APIs went public on Perq today: ZenRows and Scrapfly. Agents that read the web need some way to fetch pages that block plain HTTP clients, and most of these services let you start without a card. The real difference is whether the allowance comes back every month or is a one-time pot. We checked each figure on the vendor's pricing page.

• ZenRows (Free plan: $0/mo, 5,000 credits/month, no card)
• Scrapfly (1,000 free API credits on signup (no card, no time limit))
• ScrapingBee (1,000 free API credits)
• ScraperAPI (7-day trial with 5,000 API credits)
• Firecrawl (1,000 credits/month free)

Monthly allowance or one-time credits

• ZenRows: 5,000 credits a month on the Free plan, with no card. Credits refresh monthly and don't roll over, and the free plan allows 5 concurrent requests.
• Firecrawl: 1,000 credits a month, no card.
• Scrapfly: 1,000 credits once, at signup, with no card and no time limit. One credit pool covers all of Scrapfly's products.
• ScrapingBee: 1,000 API credits once, no card required.
• ScraperAPI: 5,000 API credits, but only for a 7-day trial. No card required.

Which one to start with

• A small agent that fetches pages every day: the monthly allowances (ZenRows and Firecrawl) keep working after the first week, so you won't run dry mid-project.
• A quick prototype or a smoke test: Scrapfly and ScrapingBee give you a fixed pot with no deadline, which is enough to try a pipeline end to end.
• A short, heavy test: ScraperAPI's trial has the biggest pot, but it ends after 7 days.

Credits are not the same unit across vendors, and a request can cost more than one credit depending on the options you use. Check each vendor's credit table for the pages you actually need to fetch.

Browser agents pack

Also public today

Six more offers came out of embargo today. Subscribers got them yesterday. They cover a free-forever database, a backend platform, faster CI runners, monthly Google developer credits for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers, a free fine-tuning promo, and realtime messaging:

• MongoDB (M0 Free forever: 512 MB storage, 32 MB sort memory, up to 100 ops/sec)
• Convex (Free plan: $0/month with built-in resources (1M function calls and 20 GB-hours action compute included))
• Blacksmith (3,000 free GitHub Actions runner minutes per month)
• Google ($10 GenAI and Cloud monthly credit with Google AI Pro; expanded credits $10/user/mo (Pro) or $40/user/mo (Ultra))
• Fireworks AI (Muse Glimmer 30B SFT free through November 30 (UI + Serverless Training API))
• Ably (Free plan: $0/month, up to 500 MAUs)

Two of them have a catch. The Fireworks Muse Glimmer promo is free only through November 30. The Google Developer Program credits need a paid Google AI Pro or Ultra plan linked to your account, so they are a subscriber benefit, not a free signup.

Want new offers a day before they show up on the site? Join early access.

Originally published on Perq, where every listing carries a source link and a last-verified date. Perq is run by Avatar 8 LLC.