REVIEW
ParseHub review
A long-running visual scraper whose free tier still covers small jobs. Paid plans are expensive and development has been quiet since 2023.
Verdict
ParseHub's free tier is the reason to look at it: a desktop point-and-click builder that handles JavaScript pages, with 200 pages per run and five projects at no cost, though free projects are public. Beyond that it is hard to recommend. Standard costs $189 a month ($155 billed quarterly) for 10,000 pages per run, well above Octoparse's from-$69 entry price, and visible development has been sparse since mid-2023, although the installer was updated in April 2025. Proxyway still listed it second among no-code tools in March 2026.
Best for
- A one-off job fits inside 200 pages per run and the data is not confidential.
- You teach or study and qualify for a free Standard licence.
- You already have ParseHub projects that still do the job.
Skip if
- You need recurring scrapes on a budget.
- Your targets use serious anti-bot protection.
- You want a vendor with frequent, visible product updates.
- Free plan
- 200 pages per run, 5 public projects, 14-day data retention
- Standard
- $189/mo, or $155/mo billed quarterly; 10,000 pages per run
- Professional
- $599/mo, or $505/mo billed quarterly; unlimited pages per run
- Paid extras
- IP rotation, scheduling, files saved to Dropbox or S3
- Speed (vendor claim)
- 200 pages in 40 min (Free), 10 min (Standard), under 2 min (Professional)
- Activity
- Blog quiet since June 2023; installer updated April 2025
Our picks
Pricing
ParseHub limits pages per run, projects and speed rather than pages per month. As of October 2026, per the ParseHub pricing page:
| Plan | Price | Pages per run | Projects | Speed (vendor claim) | Data kept |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 200 | 5 public | 200 pages in 40 min | 14 days |
| Standard | $189/mo, or $155/mo billed quarterly | 10,000 | 20 private | 200 pages in 10 min | 14 days |
| Professional | $599/mo, or $505/mo billed quarterly | Unlimited | 120 private | 200 pages in under 2 min | 30 days |
| ParseHub Plus | Custom (managed service) | — | — | — | — |
Both paid plans add IP rotation, scheduling and saving images and files to Dropbox or S3; the free plan has none of the three. Paying quarterly saves 18% on Standard ($465 a quarter instead of $567) and about 16% on Professional. ParseHub offers discounts to non-profits, students and academic institutions, plus free Standard licences for schools, colleges and universities.
One condition on the free tier is easy to miss: its projects are public. ParseHub says a public project's design and any data it scrapes "may be shared publicly without notice", so keep client work and anything confidential off the free plan.
What a page costs
With no per-page billing, the price per 1,000 pages depends on how often you run. ParseHub's FAQ describes a run as one execution of a project, for example on different starting URLs or at a different time of day, and the pricing page lists no monthly page cap. Some arithmetic for Standard:
- One 10,000-page run a month at $189: $18.90 per 1,000 pages.
- Four 10,000-page runs a month (40,000 pages): $4.73 per 1,000, or $3.88 billed quarterly.
- A daily 1,000-page run (about 30,000 pages a month): about $6.30 per 1,000.
Speed is the hidden limit. At the advertised 200 pages per 10 minutes, a full 10,000-page Standard run takes around eight hours, and a 200-page free run about 40 minutes. The FAQ adds that runs of a project crawl at the same time as long as you stay under your account's speed limit. Before committing to $189, price the same job on Octoparse (Standard from $69/mo; check the billing period) or within Apify's $5 of free monthly usage, using the cost calculator.
What it does
ParseHub is a desktop app with a visual builder: you select the elements you want on a page and it turns those selections into an extraction project, so simple jobs need no code. It handles JavaScript pages and runs projects from the desktop or in ParseHub's cloud. Paid plans add scheduling, IP rotation and Dropbox or S3 delivery of images and files. ParseHub Plus is a managed service in which ParseHub's own team does the scraping, and the company will also set up projects for a fee.
The pricing page lists IP rotation, but no residential-proxy or CAPTCHA options of the kind Octoparse sells as add-ons, so test heavily protected targets on the free tier before paying. If blocking turns out to be the real problem, a scraping API for protected sites is the better tool.
Is ParseHub still maintained?
Low activity, not abandoned. The company blog has been quiet since June 2023, while the desktop installer was updated in April 2025. That matters more for a visual scraper than for a library: when a target changes its markup or its anti-bot setup, you depend on the vendor's browser engine and fixes, and you cannot patch the tool yourself. With open-source tools such as Crawlee or Scrapy you can (see open-source scraping tools). Weigh that against a long track record and a free tier that still covers small jobs.
Independent evidence
No independent benchmark measures ParseHub's success rate: Proxyway's Web Scraping API Report 2025 (tests October 2025, published 3 December 2025) covered ten APIs and Apify, not desktop tools. Proxyway's no-code scraper list, updated in March 2026, still lists ParseHub second. That is an editorial list rather than a test result, and Proxyway uses affiliate links, so treat it as one informed opinion.
Where it fits
Our guides pick products by use case (how we pick). In the no-code guide ParseHub is the runner-up for a point-and-click builder with cloud runs. Octoparse gets that pick: its Standard plan starts at $69/mo against ParseHub's $189, and it sells residential proxies and CAPTCHA solving as add-ons for sites that block. ParseHub's case is its free plan (200 pages per run, five public projects) and free Standard licences for schools, colleges and universities.
Other tools fit other needs better:
- A ready-made scraper already exists for your site: Apify's 19,000+ Actors, with $5 of free usage a month.
- Protected targets: no benchmark covers ParseHub; a scraping API that bills only successful pages is the evidence-backed route (see the scraping API guide).
Pros and cons
Pros
- Free tier: 200 pages per run and 5 projects.
- Visual desktop builder that handles JavaScript pages.
- Paid plans include IP rotation and scheduling, with no metered add-ons listed.
- Quarterly billing cuts Standard to $155/mo.
- Free Standard licences for schools, colleges and universities.
Cons
- Free projects are public: design and data may be shared without notice.
- The highest paid entry price among the no-code tools we cover ($189/mo).
- Per-run and speed limits make cost per page depend on run frequency.
- Data kept only 14 days on Free and Standard.
- Little visible development since June 2023; no independent benchmark.
Alternatives
- Octoparse : visual builder with cloud runs and templates, from $69/mo (check the billing period).
- Apify : ready-made Actors and $5 of free usage a month.
- Bright Data : pre-built scrapers per record, 5,000 free records a month.
- Firecrawl : if someone can call an API: 1,000 free pages of Markdown a month.
- No-code web scrapers : the full guide, picks by use case.
Sources
Vendor pages checked 2026-10-17. Prices are as of October 2026 and change often; check the vendor's page before buying.
- ParseHub pricing (plans, limits, FAQ)
- ParseHub
- Proxyway Web Scraping API Report 2025 (tests Oct 2025; covers APIs and Apify, not ParseHub) (Proxyway uses affiliate links)