# Web scraping

> “Scrape competitor pricing into Airtable”. Ranked by expert consensus and what people use now; affiliate links never change the order.

A price tracker needs two parts: something that reads the competitor's page on a schedule, and a table that keeps the history. Browse AI is the no-code route: you click the prices you want and it sends them to Airtable. Apify offers ready-made scrapers called Actors and bills pay as you go after a free monthly credit. Firecrawl is an API for developers, returning clean markdown or fields you define with a schema.

Last checked: 2026-10-06

## Ranking

1. **[Apify](https://suiteintent.com/t/apify?m=GB)**: Ready-made web scrapers and automation. · Best for: Scraping popular sites without writing code · Free plan
2. **[Firecrawl](https://suiteintent.com/t/firecrawl?m=GB)**: API that turns websites into clean data. · Best for: Feeding web pages to LLM apps and agents · Free plan
3. **[Airtable](https://suiteintent.com/t/airtable?m=GB)**: A spreadsheet that works like a database. · Best for: Teams organising data without engineers · Free plan · 14 days ([Deals](https://suiteintent.com/deals/airtable))
4. **[Browse AI](https://suiteintent.com/t/browse-ai?m=GB)**: Point-and-click robots that extract and monitor web data. · Best for: Tracking competitor prices without code · Free plan

## Side by side

| Tool | Price | Ease of use (1-5) | Team size |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Apify | Pricing on request | 3 | solo, small team, growing team |
| Firecrawl | Free plan | 3 | solo, small team, growing team |
| Airtable | Pricing on request, 14-day free trial | 4 | small team, growing team, large team |
| Browse AI | Free plan | 4 | solo, small team, growing team |

## Why these picks

- Prices last checked: 2026-10-06
- Ranked by expert consensus and what people use now; affiliate links never change the order.

## Head to head

- [Apify vs Browse AI: scrapers to run or to train](https://suiteintent.com/compare/apify-vs-browse-ai)
- [Apify vs Firecrawl: web data for sheets or AI](https://suiteintent.com/compare/apify-vs-firecrawl)

## MCP setups

- [Track competitor pricing in Airtable](https://suiteintent.com/mcp/scrape-pricing-airtable)

## Questions

### Do I need to code to scrape competitor prices?

No. Browse AI lets you train a robot by clicking the parts of a page you want, then it extracts them on a schedule. Apify's marketplace has ready-made Actors for sites like Amazon and Google Maps that you run without writing code. You only need JavaScript or Python if you build your own Actor or call Firecrawl's API.

### Can I run a small price tracker for free?

A handful of competitor pages fits inside the free tiers of Browse AI and Airtable. Apify gives a free monthly credit and then charges per use, so cost follows how often you scrape. Firecrawl's free plan gives 1,000 credits a month without a card. Check prices daily rather than hourly to stay inside the free limits longer.

### I already keep prices in Google Sheets. Is Airtable worth the switch?

Sheets is fine while you track a few products in one tab. Airtable lets you link records between tables, so each product connects to its competitor and its price history. You can switch the same data to a kanban or calendar view, and automations can flag a price change. Browse AI sends results to both, so you can start in Sheets and move later.

### Can I get alerted when a competitor changes a price?

Browse AI can watch a page and report changes, so a new price lands in your table without a manual check. Apify Actors run on a schedule you set and can export each run. In Airtable, an automation can alert you when a new record differs from the last one. Keep the old rows so you see the trend over weeks.

### Is scraping competitor websites legal in the EU?

Reading publicly listed prices is common practice, but each site's terms of use can restrict automated access, so read them first. Personal data is a different matter: names or emails fall under the GDPR even when they are public. Keep your scraper polite with a low request rate. For anything beyond public product data, ask a lawyer before you build.