The Blat Master Plan

Are humans selfish by nature? The fact that scraping data is still expensive in 2025 kind of supports this idea.

Reasons why scraping data should be cheaper

• Data is non-consumable: unlike physical goods, data can be used repeatedly without depleting it.

• Data is immutable: Public data, like product prices, doesn’t change in its recorded form, making it ideal for reuse.

• Data transfers easily: As a digital good, data can be shared instantly across the globe.

• Data doesn’t deteriorate: Transferred data retains its quality, unlike perishable items.

• Shared interest in public data: Many engineers target the same websites, from e-commerce to job listings.

• Varied needs for freshness: Some need up-to-date data, while others can use historical data, reducing the need for frequent scraping.

So, why is accessing public data at scale still so expensive? Why do teams burn resources on redundant work?

Could it be that we avoid sharing scraped data, believing it gives us a competitive edge over competitors?

Funny analogy explaining why scraping data should be cheaper

Imagine a magic loaf of bread that never runs out. You take a slice to fill your stomach, and it’s still whole—ready for others to enjoy. This bread doesn’t spoil, travels the globe instantly, and can be shared by countless people at once (without being gross). Sounds like a dream, right? Which would be the price of this magic loaf of bread? Easy, it would have no value, 0.

Just like the magic loaf of bread, scraped public web data is limitless and shareable, so why pay full price to scrape it again?

Blat Master Plan

Blat’s API turns web scraping into a global team effort. With the cache_ttl flag, you can use someone else’s recent scrape of public web data at a lower cost instead of doing it yourself. For example, setting it to 3600 seconds means you’re okay with data cached within the last hour. The entity that originally scraped the cached content you consume will be rewarded, helping them fund more requests.

It’s like a shared cache system where everyone chips in and saves together. You can try it here.

Here the story of Beth, a scraping engineer

Beth is a scraping engineer tasked with scraping e-commerce price data for her team. She’s is familiar about bypassing anti-scraping measures with proxies, headless browsers, and clever workarounds. She’s talented, and after some effort, she always gets the data her team needs to move forward.

But Beth isn’t alone. Across the globe, engineers like Miguel in Spain, Ibrahim in Egypt, Wei in China, 結衣 in Japan, and João in Brazil are scraping the same product prices, tackling the same challenges, and paying the same high costs. What if they could share the effort and split the cost? Until now, no platform made that possible.

Enter Blat. With Blat’s API, engineers like Beth can access cached data from recent scrapes, set a cache_ttl based on their needs to use affordable, community-shared data. Beth shares her own scrapes and earn rewards when others use them, reducing her costs and allow her to scrape more data.

Blat turns scraping into a collaborative, cost-effective ecosystem, saving time and money for engineers worldwide.

Disclaimer: While Beth focuses on scraping e-commerce prices, Blat’s API supports a wide range of scraping needs, including flight price monitoring, job listings, social media data, news, crawling to feed large language models (LLMs) etc.

Final Thoughts

At Blat, we aim to make public data accessibility a commodity. We believe there’s no better way than by enabling our clients to benefit from community contributions and access cached data.

At the start of the AI era, now more than ever, people need reliable and affordable access to data.