Quick answer
If cost at volume is the issue, Apify is cheaper per record. If you need non-US coverage or Apple and Bing Maps, use Scrap.io. If the problem is that the export still leaves you sorting hundreds of rows by hand, you want a tool that scores and ranks rather than another extractor. And if you only pull lists occasionally, Outscraper's pay-as-you-go pricing is genuinely hard to beat, so staying put is a real answer.
First, why people leave
In practice there are three reasons, and they point to three different replacements.
- Cost at volume. Per-record pricing adds up once you are pulling tens of thousands of places a month.
- Coverage. Outscraper is US-strong. If you sell internationally you will feel the gaps.
- The export problem. You get a spreadsheet of everything it found, and deciding who is worth contacting is still entirely manual.
The third one is the most common and the least talked about, because it is not a complaint about the scraper. It is a complaint about what happens after.
The alternatives
| Tool | Starting price | Switch to it when |
|---|---|---|
| Apify | Around $1.50 per 1,000 scraped places, plus platform usage | You write code and want cheaper per-record pricing at volume |
| Scrap.io | $49/mo Basic (10,000 credits) up to $499/mo. 7-day trial, 100 leads | You need non-US coverage, or Apple and Bing Maps alongside Google |
| ZipLead | Free tier that does not expire, then $59/mo | You sell to US local businesses and want the list ranked, not just exported |
| Stay on Outscraper | Pay as you go, first 500 places free, then roughly $28.50 per 10,000 | You pull lists occasionally and already have a filtering process |
Pricing is taken from each vendor's own public pages as of August 2026 and changes often. Check with them directly before deciding.
Apify, if the issue is cost
At roughly $1.50 per 1,000 places, Apify is the cheapest per record on this list, and its catalogue goes far beyond Maps. The catch is that it is a developer platform. You pick an actor, configure it, run it, and handle the output yourself.
If nobody on your team writes code, the savings are theoretical. You will spend the difference in hours.
Scrap.io, if the issue is coverage
195 countries, three map sources, and polygon or radius search over custom areas. If your market is outside the US this is the straightforward answer.
Worth knowing before you commit: there is no permanent free tier, only a 7-day trial capped at 100 leads, and the entry plan starts at $49 a month.
If the issue is what happens after the export
Swapping one extractor for another does not help here. A cheaper CSV is still a CSV, and the hours go into deciding which twenty of three hundred businesses deserve an email this week.
That is the gap ZipLead is built for. Search a US zip code, city, region, or state and every business comes back scored 0-99 on outreach readiness, sorted before you see it. Enrichment adds SMTP-verified emails, ad detection, review history, and site health.
It is US only, and its catalogue is narrower than a general platform. If either of those matters more than ranking, one of the tools above is the better pick.
When not to switch
If you pull a list every few weeks, already know your filters, and are spending under about $30 a month, moving to a subscription is a downgrade. Pay-as-you-go with a free allowance is the right shape for that usage, and Outscraper does it well.