Allow Credit-Based Web Scraping Beyond Tier Limits (Bridge API Pricing to Web App)
Current situation: Web scraping limits are strictly capped by subscription tier (Free: 15/day, Pro: 100/day, etc.) with no option to purchase additional scrapes via credits.
The problem: With the launch of Agentic Chat, web scraping usage is likely to increase significantly as agents automatically search/scrape as part of workflows. Hitting a hard daily limit breaks the agent experience.
Existing infrastructure: The API already supports usage-based pricing for web scraping ($10/1K calls for core models, $25/1K calls for others). This proves the infrastructure exists for metered scraping.
Suggested solution: Allow users to continue scraping beyond their tier limit by spending credits at the API rate ($0.01-$0.025 per scrape) rather than being hard-stopped. This would:
Maintain predictable subscription tiers for typical usage
Allow power users to scale without forcing tier upgrades
Align web app behavior with API flexibility
Support Agentic Chat workflows that may need variable scraping volumes
Alternative: If variable pricing is too complex, offer "scraping packs" (e.g., 500 additional scrapes for $5) that can be purchased with credits.
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