You have developers who want to own the pipeline
Zyte API and Scrapy Cloud are built for engineers. If you have people who will write the spiders, read the logs and tune the selectors, a managed service puts a layer between them and the work.
Head to head
UK Data Services vs Zyte
Zyte sells scraping tools your developers run. We run the scrapers for you and send you checked data. If you have an engineering team and need volume, Zyte is the better buy. If you want the data and have nobody to write code, we are. This page sets out both sides with real prices, including the jobs we would hand to Zyte.
The short answer
They are not the same kind of product
Zyte is a scraping platform. Its main product, Zyte API, is an interface your developers call: you write the code that asks for a page, Zyte handles proxies, browser rendering and bot protection, and you are billed per thousand responses. Scrapy Cloud hosts the spiders your team writes. Zyte also sells a managed data feed, Zyte Data, where its people build the extraction and deliver files to you.
UK Data Services only does the last of those. We scope the job, build the scraper, run it on a schedule, repair it when the site changes, check the output and send you a file or a feed. There is no console to log into and no usage meter. That makes the comparison straightforward in one direction and awkward in the other: if you are weighing Zyte API against us, you are really choosing whether your team runs scrapers at all.
Choose Zyte
Zyte is the better choice when
You need millions of pages across many countries
Zyte runs global proxy infrastructure at a scale a small UK company does not. For web-scale crawling, or for sources spread across dozens of countries, start there.
Volume is high and the work is repetitive
At a $500 monthly commitment, Zyte publishes rates from $0.06 per 1,000 HTTP responses on simple sites. At tens of millions of pages, per-page pricing beats any managed quote.
You want to start this afternoon without talking to anyone
Zyte gives $5 of free credit and 30 days to try the API, with no call and no scoping. We quote after we have looked at your sources, which takes a day or two.
You need a certified information security standard in the contract
Zyte states that it is ISO 27001 certified. We are ICO-registered and work under NDA as standard, but we hold no ISO certification. If your procurement team requires one, that is a real difference and we will say so.
Scraping is your core product
If the data is what you sell and you will collect it for years, you want the infrastructure in your own hands. Buy the platform and build the team.
Choose us
We are the better choice when
Nobody on your side is going to write code
This is the difference that decides most of these comparisons. A per-request API is only cheap if you already employ someone to call it. We hand over a file, and the work of getting to that file is ours.
The job is a handful of UK sites, not a continent
A one-site starter extract is £150 at a fixed price, with the sample free and the price agreed before we begin. Maintained scrapers start at £60 a month per site for a monthly refresh, £120 weekly and £350 daily.
You want competitor prices matched to your own range
Our most requested job: your SKUs lined up against competitor products and prices in one file, not a stream of raw pages you still have to match. See the competitor price snapshot.
You want a fixed figure rather than a meter
Usage pricing means a site adding bot protection moves you from a cheap tier to an expensive one, and browser rendering costs far more than a plain fetch. We quote the job, absorb that variance, and fix layout breakages on maintained scrapers at no extra charge.
You may have to defend the numbers later
Each scraper follows fixed rules written for its source, with no model guessing at fields, so the same page gives the same output every time. On managed programmes every row carries its source URL and capture date.
You want a UK supplier under UK law
We are a UK company (No. 08576932) registered with the ICO (ZC152935), invoicing in sterling, and we check each source's terms and robots rules before collecting.
Side by side
How we compare
Zyte figures are taken from its own published pricing and product pages, read on 7 November 2026. Zyte does not state a currency code, so its prices are shown as published. Check zyte.com/pricing before relying on them.
| Zyte API | Zyte Data (managed) | UK Data Services | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you buy | A scraping interface you call from your own code | A data feed Zyte builds and delivers | A data file or feed we build and deliver |
| Who writes the code | Your developers | Zyte | We do |
| Entry price | From $0.06 per 1,000 HTTP responses at a $500 monthly commitment; pay-as-you-go from $0.13. Browser-rendered pages from $0.48 to $16.08 per 1,000 depending on tier and difficulty | Its FAQ says a single-source feed typically starts around $500 a month, with about $200 a month per further source | £150 one-off for a one-site starter extract. Maintained from £60 a month per site (monthly), £120 (weekly), £350 (daily) |
| Larger work | Volume discounts by negotiation | Quoted on the sources, fields, frequency and volume | Multi-source programmes quoted individually, typically £750 to £2,500+ a month |
| Try before you buy | $5 free credit, 30 days | Sample on request; price shown with the sample. Zyte advertises a sample in 1 day | Free sample of your agreed fields, with a fixed quote alongside it |
| When a site changes | You fix your spider; Zyte handles the blocking side | Zyte monitors the feed and fixes it | We fix it, included on maintained scrapers |
| SKU matching to your range | You build it | Deduplication and matching offered on custom plans | Included in price-monitoring work |
| Extraction method | Your rules, plus Zyte's automatic extraction where you enable it | Zyte's own stack | Fixed rules per source, no model inference |
| Security standard | Zyte states ISO 27001 certification | ICO registered (ZC152935), NDA as standard, no ISO certification | |
| Who you contract with | Zyte Group Limited, which publishes mailing addresses in Cork, Ireland and White Plains, New York, and prices in dollars | UK Data Services, a UK company (No. 08576932), invoicing in sterling | |
Worked example
Where the money actually lands
Take a common job: daily prices and stock from six UK retailer sites, around 4,000 product pages each, matched to a 3,000-SKU range. That is roughly 720,000 page fetches a month.
On Zyte API, retailer sites of that kind usually need browser rendering and sit in the harder tiers. At the published $500-commitment rate of $1.92 per 1,000 browser-rendered responses in the moderate tier, the fetching alone is around $1,380 a month, before anyone writes or maintains the six spiders, and before the SKU matching your analysts actually want. If your team already exists and has spare capacity, that is a sensible number. If you would be hiring for it, it is not the real cost.
From us, the same job is six maintained daily scrapers plus matching, quoted as one monthly figure in the £750 to £2,500 range depending on how hard the sites defend themselves. Breakages are ours to fix. The output is one file with your SKUs against their prices.
Reverse the job and the answer reverses. One simple site, 500 pages, once a month, is pennies on Zyte API if you have a developer, and £60 a month from us. Fifty million pages a month is Zyte's work, not ours. Use our cost calculator for a figure on your own job.
The facts
What we are
A small UK data extraction company, trading since 2013, with more than 500 projects delivered. On a long-running e-commerce price-monitoring job covering about 12,000 SKUs across 9 retailer sites, measured accuracy is 99.8%. We work under NDA as standard and never name clients in our marketing. For a public example of our work, see the complete dataset of every UK CMA case. For the wider version of this question, including Apify, Bright Data, freelancers and in-house teams, see when to choose UK Data Services.
Questions
Common questions
Is UK Data Services cheaper than Zyte?
For a small number of UK sites, usually yes, because our entry prices are £150 one-off or £60 a month per site and you need no developer. At high volume, no: Zyte's published rates fall to $0.06 per 1,000 simple responses and no managed service competes with that per page. The honest answer depends on page count and on whether you employ someone to run the scrapers.
Which is better for a UK small business?
Us, in most cases, and not because we are better engineers. A small business rarely has a developer free to build and maintain scrapers, and a per-request API bills for pages whether or not anyone turns them into usable data. If you do have in-house developers, compare Zyte API against the cost of our maintained plans directly.
Do you use Zyte behind the scenes?
No. We run our own extraction and our own infrastructure, which is why we can quote a fixed monthly figure rather than passing a usage meter through to you.
We already use Zyte. Can you take over an existing feed?
Yes. Send the fields and sources you receive today and we will reproduce them as a free sample so you can compare output before changing anything. We do not need access to your Zyte account.
What does Zyte do that you do not?
Global proxy infrastructure at scale, a self-serve API with a free trial and no scoping call, hosting for spiders your own team writes, and ISO 27001 certification. For web-scale crawling across many countries, Zyte is the right supplier and we will tell you so.
Are the Zyte prices on this page current?
They were read from Zyte's published pricing and product pages on 7 November 2026 and are shown as published, without a currency code, because Zyte does not state one. Vendors change prices; check zyte.com before relying on any figure here.
See your data before you decide
Send us the websites and the fields you need. We will reply with a free sample and a fixed quote, or tell you plainly that Zyte is the better fit for the job.