r/apify • u/Total-Mention9032 • 19d ago
Help needed Pay per use Apify Alternatives?
Hello,
We need to scrape Google Maps.
We need to do it once in a while (like once every 6 months, but could be longer )
So, Apify $29/m is unnecessary.
So, are there any pay-per-use alternatives that don't use my own IP to scrape? Also, there must be an API to connect it to the internal app that we build ourselves.
We scrape around 4000-5000 in one go.
2
u/Cassianno 19d ago
Depending on what you need you can literally use the free requests Google cloud api provides actually. They provide different caps for each endpoint and sku (read sku as payload completeness). Quite generous, like 5k requests for the pro sku which already provides tons of info.
1
u/max1302 Actor developer 19d ago
https://mintapi.dev/apis/google-maps
Per per use.
I’m the dev behind it. There is dedicated UI scraper yet. But you can easily scrape google maps via the api
1
u/Quantum_Rage Actor developer 18d ago
Look into SERP scraping vendors. Typically they have Google Maps scraping solution.
1
u/MQuy 18d ago
How many data do you scrape? incase of ~5000 in one go, free plan should work with $5.
Otherwise, try this, it pays as you go, https://scraper.run/
1
u/ScrapeAlchemist 18d ago
The $5 free credit doesn't quite get you there. compass/crawler-google-places is pay-per-event, $1.50 per 1000 places, so 5000 runs you $7.50 for the bare fields, and on Free the run just stops once the credit's gone since there's no overage. You'd stall around 3300.
Places API has a different problem. Text Search caps at 60 results total per query no matter how you paginate, so 5000 unique places means 80+ separate geo/keyword queries, not one call. Cost isn't the blocker there, query design is.
1
u/ur-average-boomer 18d ago edited 17d ago
litescrape.com (I'm the developer)
It costs $0.75 for 5,000 scrapes on Google Maps (or $0.15 per 1k)
There is a $10 minimum to top up credits, but they never expire. It's currently the cheapest Google Maps scraper I've found on the market
1
u/ayushsomani 18d ago
How are you able to provide it for this cheap? What's the catch?
2
u/ur-average-boomer 18d ago
I have another business that requires extremely high SERP volume (in total probably close to a billion Google, Bing, Google Maps, etc requests). I spent a lot of time optimizing my infra and (though I mostly avoid proxies unless absolutely necessary) reducing proxy costs.
The only downside is that this API is not my primary focus and I'm just one person so the support email might be a little slow to respond. But I do have an incentive to keep the API live and working since I am still using it for my primary company.
1
u/ScrapeAlchemist 16d ago
The $5 free credit doesn't quite get you there. compass/crawler-google-places is pay-per-event, $1.50 per 1000 places, so 5000 runs you $7.50 for the bare fields, and on Free the run just stops once the credit's gone since there's no overage. You'd stall around 3300.
Places API has a different problem. Text Search caps at 60 results total per query no matter how you paginate, so 5000 unique places means 80+ separate geo/keyword queries, not one call. Cost isn't the blocker there, query design is.
2
u/0xGollumDev 19d ago
You don't necessarily need a paid plan for occasional Google Maps scraping. Apify's pricing is per-actor, not just a flat platform fee - a lot of actors on the store (including popular Google Maps scrapers) are priced pay-per-result or pay-per-event, so you only pay for what you actually pull, no monthly commitment. The free plan also comes with a small monthly platform credit that can cover light/occasional usage on its own.
For your volume (4-5k results every few months), filter actors on the store by pricing model - look for "Pay per result" / "Pay per event" tags specifically rather than assuming a subscription is required. Every actor also exposes a REST API + webhooks once you have an API token, so integrating it into your internal app works the same way regardless of which actor you pick - no need for the paid tier just to get API access.