ScrapingBee vs ScraperAPI in 2026: Honest Comparison

Both ScrapingBee and ScraperAPI start at $49/month — but the cost per request varies wildly depending on what you’re scraping.

ScrapingBee is a proxy-based web scraping API with JavaScript rendering and AI extraction. ScraperAPI is a competing tool with structured data endpoints and 5 SDK languages. If you’re comparing ScrapingBee vs ScraperAPI, the first thing to understand is how each one bills you.

ScrapingBee uses a credit multiplier system. A simple proxy request costs 1 credit, but JavaScript rendering costs 5 credits and stealth proxies cost up to 75. That’s a reasonable tradeoff — JS rendering is more expensive to run — but it means your 250,000 credits could be anywhere from 250K requests (basic proxy) to 50K (JS) to 3,333 (stealth). Your actual cost depends entirely on your workload.

I ran into this when helping a developer migrate his SERP pipeline. He was using JS rendering for everything — including requests that didn’t need it — and burning through credits 5x faster than expected. That’s when I started digging into what ScraperAPI charges too, and whether both were overkill for what he actually needed.

TL;DR: ScrapingBee gives you 250K credits for $49/month, but your real request count depends on your workload (1 credit for basic proxy, 5 for JS, up to 75 for stealth). ScraperAPI is simpler at 100K flat credits for $49/month. For Google SERP data specifically, FlyByAPIs returns structured JSON at $0.50 per 1,000 requests — no credit multipliers and no HTML parsing. And for general any-URL scraping, the FlyByAPIs AI Web Scraper API now competes in the same category with one billing rule neither rival has: blocked requests cost 0 credits.

We run a SERP API and recently launched a general-purpose web scraping API on RapidAPI, so I’m a competitor here — not a neutral observer. But that also means I’ve spent real time studying how these tools work and what they charge. I’ll be upfront about where our APIs fit and where ScrapingBee or ScraperAPI are the better choice.

The real pricing math nobody shows you

Every comparison I’ve seen online lists the plan prices and moves on. That’s useless. What matters is cost per actual request — and that number is wildly different from what the pricing pages suggest.

Let me break it down.

ScrapingBee uses a credit multiplier system. Your plan buys credits, not requests. The cost per request depends entirely on what type of scraping you do:

The stealth mode cost is worth noting: 3,333 requests for $49/month. Most workloads won’t need stealth proxies — basic proxy or JS rendering handles the majority of use cases just fine. But if you do need stealth for heavily protected targets, the effective cost per request jumps significantly.

ScraperAPI is more straightforward. $49/month gets you 100,000 credits, and most requests cost 1 credit.

But they have their own quirks: geotargeting is limited to US and EU on the Hobby and Startup plans, there’s a 10-minute forced cache on difficult targets, and since January 2026 they auto-upgrade your plan if you exceed your credits. That last one caught a few people off guard on Reddit.

Feature-by-feature breakdown

Pricing aside, the ScrapingBee vs ScraperAPI comparison reveals genuinely different tools. Here’s what each one actually does — and doesn’t do.

Here’s what the ScrapingBee vs ScraperAPI feature table tells me: both are general-purpose web scraping tools. They’ll scrape any website — render JavaScript, rotate proxies, handle CAPTCHAs, return raw HTML. That’s genuinely useful if you need to scrape arbitrary pages.

But if you need Google search results, Amazon product data, or Google Maps business info? You don’t need a general-purpose scraper. You need structured data — and you’re paying a premium for capabilities you’ll never use.

ScrapingBee vs ScraperAPI: head-to-head pricing at real volumes

Let’s put real numbers on it. What does each tool cost for common use cases?

For SERP-specific workloads, we’re 5x cheaper at the entry level ($19.99 vs $49). At scale, the gap narrows but FlyByAPIs still wins on value because you get structured output with zero parsing overhead. I broke down the pricing from 10 SERP API providers if you want the full picture.

For Amazon data, Amazon Scraper API gives you 25 dedicated endpoints covering product search, reviews, pricing, deals, and seller data across 22 marketplaces — starting with a free tier of 100 requests/month. Try getting that from a general-purpose scraper.

Where FlyByAPIs wins (and where it doesn’t)

When I first published this post, my answer here was easy: FlyByAPIs did structured data only, and for arbitrary URLs I sent people straight to ScrapingBee or ScraperAPI. That has changed. We now run the AI Web Scraper API , a general-purpose scraper that plays in the exact category this post compares.

The one-sentence pitch: point it at any URL and get back HTML, LLM-ready Markdown, or JSON, on a meter that only runs when you actually get something.

The billing model is the part I care most about, because it fixes the exact problem that started this article:

• render_js=auto bills only the winning attempt. It tries plain HTTP first and escalates to a headless browser only if the page blocks; you pay for whichever one succeeded, never both. ScrapingBee and ScraperAPI both charge their JS-render surcharge regardless of outcome.
• A blocked request costs 0 credits. And you’re not left guessing: every response carries the real http_status, a block_reason, and the detected_protection (Cloudflare, DataDome, and so on).
• The credit ladder is fixed and published. Datacenter requests cost 1 credit over HTTP or 5 in the browser, ISP requests cost 5 and 20, and the AI steps are flat add-ons: +5 for extraction, +5 for summaries, +15 for rule generation.

Two features worth knowing before you pick a tool:

• extract_rules uses a ScrapingBee-compatible grammar, so selectors you wrote for ScrapingBee port over directly. Better: /ai-generate-extraction-rules writes the rules for you once from sample pages, and after that /scrape runs them at plain fetch cost, with no per-page AI charge.
• /unlock clears a protected page in the browser once, then hands back the clearance cookies and session so later calls replay them over the 1-credit HTTP path.

Pricing is simple: a free tier of 100 requests per month, then $14.99 for 100K, $49.99 for 500K, and $99.99 for 1.5M requests.

And the dedicated APIs are still there for when you don’t want to scrape at all, because the data source you need already has a structured endpoint:

• Google Search API — Structured SERP results with organic listings, People Also Ask, featured snippets, and autocomplete. 250 countries, 150 languages. Sub-2-second response.
• Amazon Data API — 25 endpoints covering product search, reviews, pricing, deals, bestsellers, and seller data across 22 marketplaces.
• Google Maps API — Full business profiles, unlimited reviews (no 5-review cap), photos, popular times. 8 endpoints.
• Translator API — Multi-format translation across dozens of languages.
• Crunchbase Scraper API — Company profiles, funding rounds, and investor data from Crunchbase.
• Jobs Search API — Job listings aggregation across multiple sources.

The result is that for these specific use cases, you get better data at a fraction of the cost. Every response is pre-structured JSON — no HTML parsing, no CSS selectors, no broken scrapers when Google updates their layout.

And the pricing is transparent: 1 request = 1 request. No credit multipliers. No auto-upgrades. No surprises.

Where ScrapingBee wins

I said I’d be honest, so here it is.

ScrapingBee is the better tool if you need to scrape arbitrary websites — not specific data sources like Google or Amazon, but any page on the internet. Their JavaScript rendering is solid and the AI-powered data extraction (where you describe what you want in natural language) is genuinely clever.

Screenshot capabilities are useful for visual monitoring tools.

Since being acquired by Oxylabs, they also have access to a massive proxy network — which makes those stealth proxies especially powerful for hard-to-reach targets.

Their CSS/XPath extraction rules also save time if you’re scraping the same page structure repeatedly — define the selectors once and get clean data back without writing a parser. If you want a deeper dive into other options beyond ScrapingBee, I wrote a full ScrapingBee alternatives comparison .

Where ScraperAPI wins

ScraperAPI’s strongest card is breadth. Five SDK languages (Python, JavaScript, Ruby, PHP, Node.js), structured data endpoints for Google, Amazon, Walmart, and Google Jobs, plus an async scraper for massive batch jobs.

Their DataPipeline feature — a no-code scheduled scraping tool — is something neither ScrapingBee nor FlyByAPIs offers. If you need to run the same scrape on a schedule without writing code, that’s a real differentiator.

The MCP Server and LangChain integrations also matter if you’re building AI-powered workflows. ScraperAPI is positioning itself as the scraping layer for LLM applications, and they’re ahead of the curve on that. For more SERP-focused alternatives, check the SerpAPI alternatives roundup .

Which one should you pick?

Skip the analysis paralysis. After comparing ScrapingBee vs ScraperAPI across every dimension, here’s the decision tree:

Do you need to scrape arbitrary websites — any URL, any structure? Go with ScrapingBee (better for hard-to-scrape targets) or ScraperAPI (better SDK support and async jobs). Both start at $49/month. Before you commit, run your hardest targets through our AI scraper too: it plays in the same category, the free tier gives you 100 requests per month, and a blocked request costs 0 credits, so the test itself is free.

Do you need Google search results, Amazon data, or Google Maps info? Use FlyByAPIs Google SERP API . You’ll pay a fraction of the cost and get cleaner data. Start with the free tier — no credit card needed.

Do you need both? This is more common than you’d think. Use FlyByAPIs for your structured data needs (SERP monitoring, Amazon product feeds, Maps business data), and for the arbitrary scraping that doesn’t fit a structured endpoint you now have three options: ScraperAPI, ScrapingBee, or the AI Web Scraper API . Whichever you pick for that piece, moving the structured workloads off a general scraper is where the savings are. You’ll spend less overall than using either general-purpose tool for everything.

I’ve seen developers running $200/month ScrapingBee bills where $150 of that was Google SERP requests. Moving those to Google Search API at $19.99/month and keeping ScrapingBee on their $49 plan for the rest? That’s a real save with zero functionality lost.

The bottom line on ScrapingBee vs ScraperAPI is simple: both are solid tools for general web scraping. If that’s what you need, pick the one that fits your workflow. But if you’re using them for Google search results, Amazon product data, or Google Maps — you’re overpaying for capabilities you don’t use.

We built these APIs because we kept seeing developers spend $100-200/month on general scrapers when all they needed was structured data from a handful of sources. The Google Search API gives you 100 requests/month — enough to validate whether it fits your use case before spending anything.

Try it. The worst case is you lose 10 minutes. The best case is you cut your API bill by 80%.

Oriol.