Google Play scraper alternatives compared

DIY scrapers, open-source libraries, scraping platforms and data APIs: what each costs you in time and money.

DIY scraper

Full control and no vendor. You own the proxy bill, the retry logic, the parser maintenance and the storage. Realistic for teams that already run crawlers.

Open-source libraries

google-play-scraper exists for Python and Node.js. Free and quick to start; they inherit every limitation of scraping from one machine and break when Google changes the page until a maintainer ships a fix.

Scraping platforms

General-purpose platforms run the scraper in their cloud with their proxies. You still pay per page fetched, and you still get only what is on the page today.

Data APIs

An index of already-collected apps. You pay per record, not per page fetched, and you get things a fresh scrape cannot give: removed apps, release history by day, charts snapshots across 184 countries and filters across the whole store.

Rough cost per 100,000 app records

• DIY: proxies and servers, plus engineering time.
• Library: free, until you are blocked.
• API: 100,000 credits, a tenth of the Pro plan's monthly quota.