ScrapingBee
Developer-friendly scraping API with JS rendering and AI extraction
The cleanest developer experience in the scraping API category, if you price your real URL mix before you commit to a tier.
Developers who want one API call that handles proxies, headless Chrome, CAPTCHAs, and structured extraction, and who value clean docs over a visual builder.
Credits are not requests. JS rendering is on by default at 5 credits, stealth mode hits 75, and credits do not roll over, so the headline number misleads.
Reach for it when your targets are open or lightly defended and you want speed and docs over raw anti-bot muscle. Skip it for hard-defended sites where benchmarks show 0%.
What you're actually getting
ScrapingBee is a scraping API you send a URL to and get a page back. It handles the proxies, the headless Chrome, and the CAPTCHAs so you do not have to. The onboarding is fast: two lines of Python and you have HTML.
The feature set is broad for the category. You get JS rendering, premium and stealth proxy tiers, screenshots, CSS/XPath extraction, an AI extraction mode that takes natural-language field descriptions, and dedicated APIs for Google Search, Amazon, Walmart, YouTube, and ChatGPT that return structured JSON.
It ships an MCP server that plugs into Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor, plus n8n and Make integrations. SOC 2 Type II and GDPR compliant, which matters if your buyer runs a compliance review. Founded 2019 in Paris, acquired by Oxylabs Group in June 2025 but still operating independently under the same founders.
I like that ScrapingBee is my main, daily driver for scraping tasks, particularly for a fleet of 300 scrapers. It's reliable and manages to get all the fields I need, especially when I'm working with Amazon. It often gets pricing data more accurately than some of its competitors.
Where it earns its keep
The win is developer experience. The docs are clean, the API is predictable, and the response times are fast. Scrapeway's August 2026 benchmark measured a 2.9s average response at $1.53 per 1,000 requests.
It also earns its place on lightly defended targets. Amazon, Google SERP, e-commerce, directories, and content pages all work well. For a GTM team that maps to price monitoring, search-rank checks, and directory pulls. Dedicated endpoints for Google and Amazon return structured JSON without you writing parsers.
G2 sits at 4.8 across 28 reviews and Capterra at 4.9 across 137. Reviewers consistently praise the support team, the integration speed, and the reliability on the kinds of sites most developers actually scrape.
UI and interface is easy to use and operate. Very simple to intergate, perfoermance was great, no issues there. Pricing is fair, but good for the support, compatibility and AI native features it offers.
Where it'll bite you
Credits are the trap. JS rendering is on by default at 5 credits per call, premium proxies push it to 25, and stealth mode tops out at 75. A $49.99 Freelance plan with 250K credits can be as few as 3,333 stealth requests. Credits do not roll over month to month, so a quiet week is wasted budget.
Before you sign up, use the on-site credit calculator to price your actual URL mix. A vanilla HTML pull costs 1 credit, but most real jobs need rendering or premium proxies, and the gap between the headline number and the real request count is where buyers get burned.
Hard anti-bot targets are the wall. Scrapeway's August 2026 benchmark scored 0% on LinkedIn, Zillow, Twitter, Walmart, StockX, and realtor.com. If your targets are heavily defended, ScrapingBee is the wrong tool. Multiple G2 and Capterra reviewers also flag that credit estimation for multi-step scenarios takes manual math the dashboard does not do for you.
Credits are consumed quickly when using JavaScript rendering or advanced features, making it harder to justify for smaller projects or teams with unpredictable scraping volumes.
What it costs, really
The entry tier is $19.99/mo for Hobby (75K credits, 25 concurrency). Freelance is $49.99 (250K, 50), Startup $99.99 (1M, 100), Business $249.99 (3M, 200), and Business+ $599.99 (8M, 400). Enterprise tiers run up to $5,799.99/mo for 120M credits. All prices ex-VAT.
The sticker price is the smallest part. The real cost is which proxy tier your targets force you into. A job that costs 1 credit on classic proxies costs 75 on stealth, and the same plan covers 75x fewer requests. Price one real job in the calculator before you pick a tier.
even with the lowest cost settings of render_js = false and using US data centers, i am able to get all the extraction i need.
Lack of more structured responses for SERP API, and instead returning only HTML which requires further parsing
Same job, other tools
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