By use case · ScrapingBee vs ScraperAPI

ScrapingBee vs ScraperAPI: credits, pricing and JavaScript rendering compared

The short answer

ScrapingBee and ScraperAPI both sell the same thing, a proxy and a browser behind a REST endpoint that hands you raw HTML, and they list at almost the same entry price. The number that decides your bill is the credit multiplier, not the credit count. ScrapingBee charges 5 credits for a JavaScript-rendered page and gives you 250,000 credits for $49.99, so about 50,000 rendered pages. ScraperAPI charges 1 credit plus 10 for rendering and gives you 100,000 credits for $49, so about 9,000 rendered pages. That is roughly five times more rendered pages per dollar on ScrapingBee. ScraperAPI wins where the target fights back: it documents Cloudflare, DataDome and PerimeterX bypasses, publishes per-domain pricing for Amazon at 5 credits, search engines at 25 and LinkedIn at 30, and bills only successful requests. Both hand back HTML, so the parsing, boilerplate stripping and schema work stays on your team either way. All figures verified from each vendor in August 2026.

Clean markdown & JSON · JavaScript rendered · robots.txt respected

Last updated August 2026

Live Extraction

Endpoint · POST /v1/extract

POST

try:

Hit Extract to turn this page into clean, LLM-ready data.

robots.txt respected · public data only

Markdown · JSON · structured fields, from one API call. Crawling, rendering and extracting ...

These two get shortlisted together because they look interchangeable on a pricing page. Both are US-friendly REST APIs, both rotate proxies, both render JavaScript, both start near $49, and both answer the same request shape: send a URL, get HTML back. The feature grids on review sites make them look like the same product with different logos.

They are not, and the difference shows up in the invoice rather than the docs. Each one bills in credits, and each one applies a different multiplier depending on what the request needed. Read only the credit allowance and you will pick wrong. ScrapingBee hands you 250,000 credits at the Freelance tier against ScraperAPI 100,000 at Hobby, which looks like a landslide, until you notice that ScrapingBee turns JavaScript rendering on by default and charges 5 credits for it whether you asked or not.

The honest split is this. If your targets are ordinary public pages that happen to need a browser, ScrapingBee is meaningfully cheaper per rendered page and the entry tier at $19.99 has no equivalent on the ScraperAPI ladder. If your targets are defended, or they are Amazon listings, search results or LinkedIn profiles, ScraperAPI has published, documented handling for exactly those cases and ScrapingBee does not price them separately at all.

We build a crawling API too, so weigh our recommendation accordingly. ClawEngine sits third in the table below and loses outright on the hardest column: we do not defeat anti-bot systems, and we have no free plan. If your problem is getting into a site that does not want you, both of these are the correct purchase and we are not. Our column is there for the different problem, which is what happens to the HTML after it arrives.

CRAWL RENDER JS EXTRACT MARKDOWN JSON

Any URL in LLM-ready data out

robots.txt respected public data only

Why it works

Three things that decide this comparison

The multiplier, not the allowance

Both vendors sell credits, and both charge more than one credit for most useful requests. Work out the multiplier that matches your actual traffic before you compare plan prices. A team scraping rendered pages and a team scraping static HTML are quoted the same $49 and get wildly different value from it.

Rendering defaults are a real cost

ScrapingBee enables JavaScript rendering by default at 5 credits a call. If half your targets are static and nobody set render_js=false, you are paying five times over for those pages. ScraperAPI defaults to no rendering, so the same mistake in reverse means pages come back missing content rather than costing extra.

Both stop at HTML

Neither product ends your work. You get a document, and your team still writes and maintains the selectors, the boilerplate stripping and the mapping into whatever shape your database or vector store needs. Count that engineering time when you compare, because it does not appear on either pricing page.

What it handles

Any URL in, clean structured data out

Point ClawEngine at a public page and it crawls, renders the JavaScript and extracts clean markdown or typed JSON in one call. Define a schema for structured fields, and respect robots.txt and Terms of Service by default.

Compares August 2026 pricing verified from both vendors directly
Publishes the full credit multiplier table for each API
Shows how many rendered pages roughly $49 actually buys
Explains the rendering default that silently multiplies bills
Names the jobs where each tool is the wrong purchase
States plainly where ClawEngine loses to both

POST /v1/extract extraction result

200 · JSON

{
  "url": "https://example.com/products/atlas",
  "title": "Atlas Field Notebook",
  "markdown": "# Atlas Field Notebook\n\nDurable...",
  "data": {
    "name": "Atlas Field Notebook",
    "price": 24.00,
    "currency": "USD",
    "rating": 4.7
  },
  "links": [ "/products", "/cart" ],
  "metadata": { "rendered": true }
}

JS rendered · boilerplate stripped ✓ robots.txt respected

Head to head

ScrapingBee vs ScraperAPI, side by side

Every figure below was read from each vendor's own pricing page and developer documentation in August 2026, not from a review aggregator. We include ourselves in the third column and we lose several rows.

Swipe to compare all columns →

What you are comparing	ScrapingBee	ScraperAPI	ClawEngine
What it is	Proxy plus headless browser behind a REST endpoint, returning raw HTML	Proxy infrastructure first, with a REST endpoint and per-domain structured endpoints	Crawl, render and typed schema extraction in a single API call
Entry price	$19.99/mo Hobby, 75,000 credits	$49/mo Hobby, 100,000 credits	$39/mo Hobby
Free tier	1,000 credits, no card required	5,000 credits on signup, then 1,000 a month at 5 threads	No free plan
Published tiers	Hobby $19.99 (75k), Freelance $49.99 (250k), Startup $99.99 (1M), Business $249.99 (3M), Business+ $599.99 (8M), Enterprise $999.99 (14M) up to $5,799.99 (120M)	Hobby $49 (100k), Startup $149 (1M), Business $299 (3M), Scaling $475 (5M), Enterprise by quote. Annual billing drops these to $44, $134, $269 and $427	Hobby $39, Startup $99, Scale $399, Enterprise custom
Plain HTML page	1 credit	1 credit	Counted as one page
JavaScript-rendered page	5 credits, and rendering is ON BY DEFAULT unless you pass render_js=false	1 credit plus 10 for render=true, so 11	Included. Rendering is not metered separately
Premium or residential proxy	10 credits alone, 25 credits with rendering	10 credits added for premium, 25 total with rendering	Not offered
Hardest tier	Stealth proxy at 75 credits per successful call	Ultra premium at 30 added, or 75 total with rendering	Not supported. We do not defeat anti-bot systems
Rendered pages for about $49	About 50,000, from 250,000 credits at 5 each	About 9,000, from 100,000 credits at 11 each	Rendering included in the page count on every tier
Named anti-bot handling	Premium and stealth proxy tiers, not documented per vendor	Cloudflare, DataDome and PerimeterX bypasses, each adding 10 credits	None. Out of scope by design
Per-domain pricing	A Google Search API is bundled into every tier	Amazon 5 credits, search engines 25, LinkedIn 30, plus a published Domain Multiplier tool	No per-domain endpoints. It is a general crawler
Concurrency at entry	25 threads on Hobby, up to 900	20 threads on Hobby, up to 200 on Scaling	Concurrency scales with tier
Billing on failures	Stealth proxy calls are documented as billed only when successful	Only 200 and 404 responses are billed	Only successfully fetched pages are counted
Output format	Raw HTML, plus CSS extraction rules and screenshots	Raw HTML, plus structured JSON endpoints for a fixed set of domains	Clean markdown or typed JSON matching a schema you supply
Best for	Rendered pages on ordinary public sites, at the lowest cost per rendered page	Defended targets, marketplaces and search results, where success rate matters more than unit cost	One compliance-first call that crawls a site and returns typed JSON for RAG and agents
Main gotcha	Rendering defaults to on, so an unconfigured integration quietly bills 5x	The multiplier stack is where the money goes, not the plan price	No free plan, and defended sites are out of scope

Prices are US list prices in USD per month. ScraperAPI documents render as adding 10 credits to a 1-credit base, so we use 11 for a rendered page; if their playground quotes 10 flat for your target, the arithmetic moves in favor of ScraperAPI by about nine percent. Both vendors publish tools for checking the exact cost of a specific domain before you commit, and running a real sample beats trusting anybody table of figures, including this one.

Why ClawEngine

One API that crawls, renders and extracts

Not a raw HTML dump, not a headless browser fleet to run, and not a brittle parser to maintain. One call crawls a public page, renders its JavaScript and returns clean markdown or typed JSON, built for RAG pipelines and AI agents.

LLM-ready output

Clean markdown or typed JSON with the boilerplate stripped, so the data drops straight into a vector store, a prompt or an agent without a cleanup step.

JavaScript rendered

Each page loads in a real browser environment before extraction, so single-page apps and client-rendered content come back complete, not as an empty shell.

Compliance-first

ClawEngine works on public, permitted data only. It respects robots.txt and site Terms of Service and honors crawl-delay, so responsible scraping is the default.

Code examples

The version of this job with no multiplier table to read

If your targets are ordinary public pages and you want typed JSON rather than HTML you still have to select, parse and map, the whole request looks like this. Rendering is part of the call rather than a metered add-on.

curl Crawl a catalog and return typed JSON

curl https://api.clawengine.ai/v1/crawl \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CLAWENGINE_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "url": "https://example.com/products",
    "path_prefix": "/products/",
    "max_pages": 500,
    "render": true,
    "schema": {
      "name": "string",
      "price": "number",
      "sku": "string",
      "in_stock": "boolean"
    }
  }'

# No credit multiplier to look up, no selectors to maintain.
# Rendering is on by default and robots.txt is respected.

ScrapingBee vs ScraperAPI: the questions buyers ask

What is the difference between ScrapingBee and ScraperAPI?

Both return raw HTML from a proxied, optionally rendered request, so the difference is pricing shape and target coverage. ScrapingBee is cheaper per JavaScript-rendered page, charging 5 credits against 11, and starts at $19.99. ScraperAPI is built proxy-first, documents named bypasses for Cloudflare, DataDome and PerimeterX, and publishes separate rates for Amazon, search engines and LinkedIn.

Is ScrapingBee or ScraperAPI better?

Neither wins outright and the deciding question is whether your targets fight back. Pick ScrapingBee when the pages are ordinary but need a browser, because you get roughly five times more rendered pages per dollar. Pick ScraperAPI when success rate on defended sites or marketplaces is what keeps you up at night, because that is what the multiplier premium buys.

How much does ScrapingBee cost?

ScrapingBee publishes a free tier of 1,000 credits with no card, then Hobby at $19.99 a month for 75,000 credits, Freelance at $49.99 for 250,000, Startup at $99.99 for 1 million, Business at $249.99 for 3 million and Business+ at $599.99 for 8 million, followed by an Enterprise ladder reaching $5,799.99 for 120 million. Verified from ScrapingBee in August 2026.

How much does ScraperAPI cost?

ScraperAPI gives 5,000 credits on signup then 1,000 free a month at 5 concurrent threads. Paid tiers are Hobby at $49 for 100,000 credits and 20 threads, Startup at $149 for 1 million and 50 threads, Business at $299 for 3 million and 100 threads, and Scaling at $475 for 5 million and 200 threads. Annual billing drops those to $44, $134, $269 and $427. Verified in August 2026.

How many credits does a request cost on ScrapingBee?

A plain request is 1 credit, but JavaScript rendering is on by default and costs 5. Premium proxy is 10 credits on its own and 25 when combined with rendering. Stealth proxy is 75 credits per successful call. The auto mode escalates through those levels until a request succeeds, so a single blocked page can cost anywhere from 1 to 75 credits.

How many credits does a request cost on ScraperAPI?

A flat request is 1 credit. Adding render=true costs 10 more, premium=true costs 10 more, premium combined with rendering is 25 total, and ultra premium with rendering is 75. Amazon and other ecommerce targets are 5 credits, search engine results are 25 and LinkedIn is 30. Cloudflare, DataDome and PerimeterX bypasses each add 10.

Which is cheaper for JavaScript-heavy sites?

ScrapingBee, by a wide margin. At roughly the same $49 list price you get 250,000 credits at 5 credits per rendered page, about 50,000 pages, against 100,000 credits at 11 credits per rendered page, about 9,000 pages. The gap only closes if your targets are defended enough that the higher success rate on ScraperAPI saves you more in retries than it costs in credits.

Does ScrapingBee or ScraperAPI return structured JSON?

Only partially, and this is the shared limitation people underestimate. ScrapingBee offers CSS extraction rules you write yourself. ScraperAPI offers structured JSON endpoints for a fixed list of popular domains. Anything outside those cases comes back as HTML, and the selectors, the boilerplate stripping and the schema mapping remain your code to write and maintain.

Do they charge for failed requests?

ScraperAPI documents that it bills only 200 and 404 responses, so blocked and errored requests are not charged. ScrapingBee documents its stealth proxy tier as billed only on successful calls. Neither policy protects you from the more common problem, which is a request that succeeds technically and returns a challenge page or an empty shell that your parser then has to detect.

What is a good alternative to ScrapingBee and ScraperAPI?

It depends on which half of the job you want solved. For defended marketplace targets at real scale, Bright Data or Oxylabs are the honest recommendation over both of these. For crawling a permitted public site and getting typed JSON matching your own schema in one call, with no parser to maintain, ClawEngine fits that shape at $39 a month, with no free plan and no anti-bot capability.

Good questions

Questions about ScrapingBee vs ScraperAPI

Yes, and routing by target difficulty is usually cheaper than forcing everything down one path. Send ordinary public pages that need a browser to ScrapingBee, where a rendered page is 5 credits, and reserve ScraperAPI for the defended targets and marketplace endpoints it prices explicitly. The routing logic is a few lines and it often saves more than either annual discount.

Neither enforces it for you by default, which matters because the legal exposure from a crawl sits with the customer rather than the vendor. If you need robots.txt and crawl-delay honored as a matter of policy rather than as something a developer remembers to configure, check the setting explicitly on whichever you buy, or pick a tool where that behavior is the default.

Read every web scraping question

Explore more

More ways to turn the web into data with ClawEngine

See every use case See pricing Back to the web scraping API

Stop wrangling raw HTML. Get LLM-ready data.

Point ClawEngine at a public page and one call crawls, renders the JavaScript and extracts clean markdown or typed JSON, ready for your RAG pipeline or AI agent. Public, permitted data only.

See pricing

Crawl · render JS · extract markdown & JSON · robots.txt respected, public data only