Irmu vs Oxylabs
Per-target enterprise pricing and strict pay-for-success versus a single credit ledger.
Oxylabs prices by results rather than requests, and tiers those results by how hard the target is: Amazon at $0.50 per thousand, Google at $1.00, other domains at $1.15, JavaScript rendering at $1.35, media downloads at $3 per gigabyte. If your volume is concentrated on the cheap tiers, the arithmetic is genuinely attractive.
It is also a strict pay-for-success model — you are billed for successful results, not attempts — backed by an enterprise proxy business and the support structure that implies. Onboarding is a trial capped at 2,000 results rather than a permanent free plan.
Irmu prices everything from one credit ledger regardless of target, and adds a browser endpoint, screenshots and a proxy port to the same key. You lose the cheap-Amazon tier; you gain a model where you do not need to know which pricing bucket a domain falls into before you can estimate cost.
What each one costs
Public list pricing, checked on 29 August 2026. Vendors change plans often — verify on their pricing page before you commit.
Irmu
$40 / month — 200,000 credits
Credits, one ledger for every API. Plain fetch is 1 credit, JavaScript rendering 5, premium residential 10, premium plus rendering 25, an AI extraction query 5, and geotargeting by country, region or city is free. A response from the target — including 404, 500 or an anti-bot block — is a successful request and is billed. Requests Irmu cannot serve for its own internal reasons, or to domains outside coverage such as .gov, are not billed.
Oxylabs
Web Scraper API Micro — from $0.50 per 1,000 results, up to 98,000 results
Per 1,000 successful results, tiered by target: Amazon $0.50, Google $1.00, other domains $1.15, JavaScript rendering $1.35, media download $3 per GB. Residential proxies are sold separately from around $6 per GB.
- On Irmu's Lite plan, 200,000 plain fetches cost $40 — $0.20 per thousand. Oxylabs' cheapest tier is $0.50 per thousand for Amazon and $1.15 for general domains, though a rendered or residential Irmu request costs 5 to 25 credits and moves that comparison.
- Oxylabs bills only for successful results. Irmu's definition is broader: any response the target returns is billed, including 404, 500 and anti-bot blocks.
- Oxylabs offers a trial capped at 2,000 results rather than a permanent free plan; Irmu's free plan is 200 credits every month, ongoing.
Side by side
| Capability | Irmu | Oxylabs |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing shape | One credit table for every domain | Per-1,000 results, tiered by target difficulty |
| Cheapest unit | $0.20 per 1,000 plain fetches on Lite | $0.50 per 1,000 Amazon results |
| JavaScript rendering | 5 credits per request | $1.35 per 1,000 results |
| Residential proxies | 10 credits per request, same ledger | Sold separately, from around $6 per GB |
| Scriptable remote browser | Browser endpoint with clicks, waits and scrolls | Not published as a first-party endpoint |
| Success billing | Any target response is billed | Only successful results are billed |
| Free access | 200 credits monthly, ongoing | Trial up to 2,000 results |
| Geotargeting | Country, region and city at no extra cost | Granular targeting on proxy products |
Which one fits your job
Choose Oxylabs when
- Most of your volume is Amazon or Google, where their per-target rates are lowest.
- You want to be billed strictly on successful results and nothing else.
- You are buying proxies at gigabyte scale alongside the scraping API.
- Enterprise procurement, account management and SLAs are part of the requirement.
Choose Irmu when
- Your targets are spread across many domains and per-target tiers make forecasting hard.
- You need a browser session and screenshots on the same key as your fetches.
- A permanent free tier for CI and monitoring is worth more than a capped trial.
- You want residential IPs priced inside the same ledger rather than as a separate gigabyte contract.
What Oxylabs does well
- Per-target pricing that rewards concentrated volume
- Strict pay-only-for-successful-results billing
- Very large enterprise proxy network
- Established compliance and account management
Oxylabs is compelling if your volume sits in its cheap target tiers and strict success billing matters. Irmu is the better fit for a spread of arbitrary domains where one predictable ledger and a browser on the same key save more than a per-target discount.
The same request, both ways
Oxylabs uses a JSON POST with basic auth; Irmu uses query parameters with an API key.
Oxylabs
import requests
r = requests.post(
"https://realtime.oxylabs.io/v1/queries",
auth=(OXYLABS_USER, OXYLABS_PASS),
json={
"source": "universal",
"url": "https://example.com/product/42",
"render": "html",
"geo_location": "United States",
},
timeout=120,
)
html = r.json()["results"][0]["content"]Irmu
import requests
r = requests.get(
"https://app.irmu.com/api/crawl",
params={
"url": "https://example.com/product/42",
"js": "true",
"premium": "true",
"country": "us",
},
headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {IRMU_KEY}"},
timeout=90,
)
r.raise_for_status()
html = r.textSwitching questions
Other comparisons
Irmu vs Firecrawl
Agent-ready markdown and crawling versus a full fetch, browser, screenshot and proxy stack.
Irmu vs ScrapingBee
A closely matched credit model — the difference is browser control and the proxy port.
Irmu vs ScrapingDog
Similar entry pricing — the split is dedicated site scrapers versus general-purpose access.
Irmu vs ScraperAPI
Structured e-commerce endpoints and no-code pipelines versus a general access layer.
Irmu vs ZenRows
Two similar credit-based platforms — the difference is agent tooling versus browser and proxy depth.
Irmu vs Bright Data
The largest proxy network in the market versus a simpler, credit-priced access layer.
Irmu vs Apify
A marketplace of pre-built Actors versus a direct API you call from your own code.
Try Irmu alongside Oxylabs
200 free credits every month, no card required — benchmark on your own targets.