The four pricing models
Before any numbers, it helps to know what each vendor is metering, because that decides which costs are fixed and which grow with use.
Monthly credits
You pay a flat monthly fee for a block of credits, and one credit is one exported lead. Starter is $19 for 1,000, Growth $49 for 5,000, Scale $129 for 20,000.
Watch for: Unused monthly credits reset, and the plan also decides which fields you receive.
Pay per event, on platform credit
You subscribe to the Apify platform ($0, $19, $199 or $999 a month), and that amount becomes usage credit. The actor then charges per event: each place scraped, plus a separate charge for each add-on you switch on.
Watch for: The per-place rate depends on your platform plan, add-ons multiply, and unused prepaid usage expires each cycle.
Pay per record
No subscription. You're billed for the records you pull, at a listed $3 per 1,000 Google Maps records, with a small free allowance and a lower rate at very high volume.
Watch for: Enrichment such as emails and contacts is a separate service with its own price.
Execution time
Plans buy hours of automation run time and a number of slots: Start is $56 a month billed annually for 20 hours, Grow $128 for 80 hours, Scale $352 for 300 hours.
Watch for: There's no price per lead. What a list costs depends on how long the automation takes to collect it.
A note on sources. Apify's figures come from its pricing page and the event list on the Google Maps Scraper actor (compass/crawler-google-places). PhantomBuster's come from its pricing page, annual-billing prices. Outscraper's $3 per 1,000 is its widely published rate, but its pricing page sits behind a bot check we couldn't pass on the day, so treat that figure as the one to confirm yourself. All of these change; check the vendor's page before you budget.
The monthly bill at three volumes
First the plain case: business listings only, no filters, no enrichment, no reviews. This is the comparison that favors per-record pricing most.
| Per month | MapsHarvest | Apify | Outscraper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 leads | $19 (Starter) | $0 (Free plan: $4 of usage, inside the $5 credit) | $3 |
| 5,000 leads | $49 (Growth) | $19 (Starter: $15 of usage) | $15 |
| 20,000 leads | $129 (Scale) | $60 (Starter: $19 + $41 overage) | $60 |
How the Apify column is worked out: the actor charges $4 per 1,000 places on the Free plan and $3 on Starter. A thousand places is $4 of usage, which the Free plan's $5 monthly credit absorbs. Five thousand is $15, inside Starter's $19. Twenty thousand is $60 of usage, so the $19 subscription plus $41 billed as overage. The $199 Scale plan drops the rate to $2 per 1,000, but it only becomes cheaper than Starter-plus-overage past roughly 66,000 places a month. Outscraper's column is $3 per 1,000 before its free allowance.
PhantomBuster isn't in the table because it can't be: 20 hours of execution time for $56 buys however many listings the automation collects in 20 hours, and that varies with the search.
Read plainly, on raw rows MapsHarvest costs more at every volume shown. If raw rows are what you need, the per-record tools are the better buy, and the rest of this page won't change that.
The same bill with two filters switched on
Few lead lists are raw rows. A typical brief is closer to "dentists with a website and at least a 4.0 rating". That's two filters, and it changes the arithmetic, because Apify's actor prices a filter as an add-on event: $1 per 1,000 places for each filter on the Free and Starter plans.
| Per month, 2 filters | MapsHarvest | Apify |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 leads | $19 | $19 (usage is $5 to $6, past the free credit) |
| 5,000 leads | $49 | $25 |
| 20,000 leads | $129 | $100 |
The MapsHarvest column doesn't move, because filters aren't billed. At 1,000 leads the two are now level at $19. At 20,000, Apify is still cheaper, $100 against $129, but the gap has gone from $69 to $29. Add company contact enrichment at $2 per 1,000 and it's $140. The general point holds for any per-event tool: price the run you'll actually configure, not the headline rate.
MapsHarvest pricing in detail
The full table is on the pricing page. The parts that matter for a cost comparison:
| Plan | Monthly | Credits | Per 1,000 leads | Fields |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 50 | — | 13 |
| Starter | $19 | 1,000 | $19.00 | 16 |
| Growth | $49 | 5,000 | $9.80 | 23 |
| Scale | $129 | 20,000 | $6.45 | 23 |
| Enterprise | $250+ | 50k–500k | $5.00 | 23 |
Three details that don't show up in a per-1,000 figure. First, plans differ by more than credits: Excel export starts on Starter; JSON, the REST API and webhooks start on Growth; scheduled scrapes start on Scale. Second, annual billing is ten months' price for twelve, which takes Growth from $9.80 to $8.17 per 1,000.
Third, top-ups are priced above plan credits on purpose: 1,000 extra credits cost $24.99. So if you're on Starter and need 1,500 leads this month, Starter plus one top-up is $43.99 for 2,000 credits, while Growth is $49 for 5,000 with the full field set. Top-ups are for an occasional overshoot. If you need one most months, the next plan up is cheaper.
Which model fits which job
- A one-off list, a few hundred to a few thousand rows: Pay-per-record or a free tier. No subscription to cancel afterwards. MapsHarvest's 50 free credits or Apify's $5 monthly credit will cover a small test either way.
- Raw rows at high volume, pulled by a developer: Pay-per-event. At 20,000 unfiltered places a month, Apify's Starter plan comes to about $60, less than half of MapsHarvest Scale. If per-row cost is the only thing you're optimizing, that's the answer.
- A filtered lead list every month, built by a non-developer: Monthly credits. The bill is the same every month, filters are included, and nobody has to estimate events. Growth at $49 for 5,000 leads is the plan most of these teams land on.
- Google Maps as one source among LinkedIn, Instagram and others: A time-based automation platform such as PhantomBuster can make sense, because the same hours cover every source. For Maps alone it's an expensive way to buy a list.
Price is one axis. For features, coverage and ease of use side by side, see the roundup of Google Maps scrapers, or the head-to-head pages for Apify and Outscraper.
FAQ
How much does a Google Maps scraper cost per 1,000 leads?+
On published rates checked on October 1, 2026: Apify's Google Maps Scraper charges $4 per 1,000 places on its free plan and $3 on its $19 Starter plan, before add-ons. Outscraper lists $3 per 1,000 records. MapsHarvest works out to $19.00 per 1,000 on Starter, $9.80 on Growth and $6.45 on Scale. PhantomBuster bills for execution time, so it has no fixed per-lead rate.
Is there a free Google Maps scraper?+
Several tools have a free tier big enough to test with. MapsHarvest's free plan includes 50 credits with no card required. Apify's free plan includes $5 of monthly usage, which covers about 1,250 places on its Google Maps Scraper at $4 per 1,000 with no add-ons. Free tiers are for checking data quality; nobody runs a sales team off one.
Why not use the cheapest per-record tool every time?+
Because the per-record rate is only the whole bill if you use no add-ons, need no filtering, and are comfortable configuring runs yourself. Filters, contact enrichment and plan minimums all sit on top. For a developer pulling raw rows at volume, the cheapest rate usually does win. For a sales team that wants a filtered list every month at a known price, it often doesn't.
Do unused credits carry over?+
On MapsHarvest, monthly plan credits reset each billing cycle; top-up credits don't expire while you keep a paid subscription. Apify states that unused prepaid usage expires at the end of each billing cycle. PhantomBuster's execution time is also a monthly allowance. If your volume swings a lot month to month, that matters more than the headline rate.
What does a credit buy on MapsHarvest?+
One credit is one lead in your export. Filters for minimum rating, review count, has-website and has-phone run during the scrape, so a listing that fails them is never written to the file and doesn't use a credit.
Price your own list before you pay
Run a real search with your own filters on the free plan and see how many leads come back. 50 free credits, no credit card.