Introducing Packet: The Global, Replicated, Low-Latency Scraping Engine

We are incredibly excited to officially introduce Packet (pckt.sh)—a next-generation, globally distributed API built to handle web scraping, structured datasets, and high-performance data delivery at scale.
Whether you need real-time data extraction, raw datasets, or ultra-low-latency API access to pre-scraped catalogs, Packet is built from the ground up to handle your data infrastructure needs without the traditional bottlenecks.

What is Packet?

Packet is a unified data-as-a-service platform offering three core capabilities designed to fit different engineering and business requirements:

• Scraping API: Built for real-time data extraction. Monthly subscriptions starts at €29 and grant a monthly balance of credits. Requests cost between 0.1 and 4 credits depending on the complexity of the target and the anti-bot bypasses required.
• Datasets: Ideal for training models, market research, or internal analytics. We provide fully managed, pre-scraped data exported in clean CSV or JSONL formats. Pricing starts at €99 for a one-time monthly export, with custom frequencies available.
• Catalog API: The best of both worlds. Billed through our Scraping API but heavily optimized for cost (~0.5 credits/request), this REST API serves pre-scraped data instantly. It delivers unblocked, ultra-low-latency responses (sub-100ms) with data refreshed daily.

From KicksDB to Packet

Packet is the natural evolution of KicksDB, our flagship platform that continues to serve thousands of developers. While KicksDB successfully proved the demand for structured catalog and real-time APIs, we quickly realized we were outgrowing our own foundations.

We built Packet to solve three fundamental challenges:

• True Global Scale: KicksDB reached a milestone of over 2,000 users—an incredible feat, but one that pushed our original single-server infrastructure to its absolute limits. Packet solves this permanently by deploying a replicated, edge-native architecture. Data and requests are handled by servers distributed globally, ensuring high availability and minimal latency no matter where your application is hosted.
• Niche to Agnostic: The "Kicks" in KicksDB locked us into sneakers and apparel. Packet is completely domain-agnostic. It is designed as a high-performance playground where we—and eventually our partners—can spin up and scale data pipelines for any industry or use case.
• An Expanded Ecosystem: Packet introduces fully public Datasets from day one. Looking ahead, we are also building a curated Data Marketplace, which will allow vetted developers to deploy their own custom APIs on top of our infrastructure and monetize them directly through Packet.

What this means for KicksDB users

When we first conceived Packet, the plan was to keep both platforms entirely separate. However, seeing the resilience, stability, and speed of the new Packet network made us realize that holding KicksDB back from this technology would be a disservice to our existing users.
To bring the best of Packet to KicksDB, we are rolling out a three-phase migration strategy that guarantees zero disruption:

• Phase 1: The Modern Underlayer — KicksDB will transition to run as a compatibility layer on top of Packet’s data engine. Your API endpoints, request/response schemas, and auth keys will remain completely unchanged.
• Phase 2: Global Edge Replication — KicksDB users will automatically inherit Packet’s global infrastructure. Your queries will instantly benefit from multi-region edge routing, resulting in massive drops in latency and rock-solid uptime.
• Phase 3: The Unified Platform — Once Packet natively supports every feature and data vertical currently offered by KicksDB, we will close new registrations on KicksDB and fully transition our focus to the Packet ecosystem.

Looking ahead

Building the infrastructure to make web data instantly accessible, reliable, and cheap at the edge has been a massive technical journey. Packet is the culmination of everything we’ve learned running production data pipelines over the last few years.

We want to extend a massive thank you to our early users, testers, and the KicksDB community who made this evolution possible. We can’t wait to see what you build with Packet.