Why people look for an Octoparse alternative
Three complaints come up again and again from people who just want a Google Maps lead list:
- It's built for many sites, not Google Maps specifically. Octoparse ships 500+ templates and a point-and-click workflow editor that works on almost any structured page. That breadth means Maps gets a template, not a purpose-built tool — dynamic content, pagination, or a field the template doesn't cover means clicking your way to a custom XPath selector.
- Credits disappear in places you didn't plan for. Cloud extraction adds proxy and CAPTCHA-solving credits on top of the task quota — and CAPTCHA credits get consumed even on failed attempts, with duplicate rows quietly eating into the same allowance.
- You're running software, not just a scrape. Local extraction needs the desktop app installed and kept current; real concurrency for cloud runs only opens up on the $69/mo Standard plan and up. For a non-technical sales team, that's infrastructure to maintain, not a list to download.
None of that is a knock on Octoparse as a general-purpose scraper — it's a genuinely deep tool. It just means the parts that make it flexible for scraping any site are overhead when the only site you care about is Google Maps.
MapsHarvest vs Octoparse at a glance
| MapsHarvest | Octoparse | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Flat per-lead credits. 1 credit = 1 lead, always. | Per-task quota plus a concurrency tier. Free: 10 tasks, 50,000 rows/month. Standard ($69/mo): 100 tasks, 3 concurrent cloud runs. Professional ($249/mo): 250 tasks, 20 concurrent. |
| Setup | Pick a category, pick locations, hit start. Nothing to configure. | Install the desktop app (or open the cloud workspace) and either click through a workflow yourself or launch the maintained Maps template and type a keyword. |
| Where it runs | Fully web-based. Nothing to install, nothing to keep updated. | Local runs need the desktop app; real concurrency for cloud runs is gated to the Standard plan and up. |
| Results per search | Loops every city in your selected regions automatically — no manual splitting. | Google Maps itself caps a single search around ~120 results; Octoparse's own blog walks through manually splitting a metro into micro-zones to get past it. |
| Custom fields | Choose from up to 18 fields per lead — no configuration required. | The template covers core fields out of the box; anything outside it means clicking your way to a new XPath selector. |
| Built for | Google Maps lead generation, and nothing else. | 500+ templates across many sites — e-commerce, real estate, job boards. Maps is one of many, not the focus. |
The pricing math, honestly
Octoparse doesn't sell you rows directly — it sells task slots and concurrent cloud runs. The free plan is generous for a first test: 10 tasks and 50,000 rows of export a month, no time limit. Move to Standard at $69/mo and you get 100 tasks and 3 concurrent cloud processes plus IP rotation and CAPTCHA solving — genuinely useful if you're running many different scraping projects across many sites, and irrelevant weight if Google Maps is the only one you have.
MapsHarvest charges per result: 1 credit = 1 lead. The Growth plan is $49/mo for 5,000 credits — 5,000 businesses, with all 18 fields, JSON export, and the API included. Scale is $129/mo for 20,000 credits, still below Octoparse's $249/mo Professional tier, with no separate task ceiling or concurrency tier to reason about — because there's only one kind of job here: a Google Maps scrape. Compare plans on the pricing page.
When Octoparse is the better pick
Fair is fair: if you need to scrape more than Google Maps — product listings, real estate portals, job boards, or any site without a ready-made template elsewhere — Octoparse's 500+ template library and general-purpose workflow engine earns its learning curve. That breadth is the actual point of the product, and no Maps-only tool replaces it.
Choose MapsHarvest when the job is specifically Google Maps lead generation, and you'd rather never open a workflow editor at all.
How to switch in 5 steps
Create a free account
50 free credits, no credit card, no download. Enough to pull a real sample list and compare data quality side by side.
Pick your business category
Choose from Google's own category taxonomy — restaurants, roofers, dentists, whatever you sell into — instead of typing a keyword into a workflow template and hoping it matches.
Choose your geography
6 countries, 112,000+ cities. Select whole states or hand-pick cities — MapsHarvest loops every city automatically, so there's no ~120-result cap to work around city by city.
Set smart filters
Minimum rating, review-count range, has-website, has-phone. Filters run during the scrape, so you only spend credits on leads that actually match — no separate CAPTCHA or proxy credits to track.
Download your CSV
CSV, XLSX, or JSON — one row per business, ready for your dialer or CRM. Webhooks and API on Growth+, no add-on tier needed to push to Sheets.
Get your first list without a workflow editor
50 free credits. No credit card. No desktop app, no XPath, no CAPTCHA credits.
Try MapsHarvest free →