TL;DR — Quick Comparison Table
Don't have time to read everything? Here's the summary. Scroll down for the full breakdown with code examples.
| Service | Free Tier | Starting Price | JS Rendering | Residential Proxies | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ScraperAPI | 1,000 credits/mo | $49/mo (100K calls) | Yes | Yes | Most teams, best value |
| Browserless | 6 hrs/mo | $50/mo (self-hosted) | Yes (native) | No | Playwright/Puppeteer users |
| Bright Data | No | $500+/mo | Yes | Yes (largest) | Enterprise, large scale |
| ZenRows | 1,000 req/mo | $49/mo (25K calls) | Yes | Yes | Bypassing tough anti-bots |
| ScrapingBee | 1,000 credits | $49/mo (150K credits) | Yes | Premium add-on | Quick integration, SMBs |
| Apify | $5 credit/mo | $49/mo | Yes | Yes | Full scraping platform, actors |
Bottom line: For 80% of teams, ScraperAPI hits the right balance of price, reliability, and simplicity. Bright Data wins at scale but costs 10x more. Browserless is the right call only if you're already deep in Playwright/Puppeteer.
1. ScraperAPI — Best Overall
ScraperAPI abstracts away the entire infrastructure problem: rotating proxies, browser fingerprinting, CAPTCHA solving, and geo-targeting are all handled automatically. You send a URL, you get back HTML. The API has been around since 2018 and handles billions of requests monthly for customers ranging from solo developers to Fortune 500 companies.
What makes it stand out in 2026 is the combination of automatic retry logic, a structured data endpoint (returns parsed JSON for Amazon, Google, and 50+ other targets), and one of the best success-rate guarantees in the industry. You only get charged for successful responses — a genuinely rare policy.
Pros
- Charges only for successful responses
- Automatic proxy rotation + CAPTCHA bypass
- JS rendering with a single parameter
- Structured data extraction (Amazon, Google, etc.)
- Geotargeting by country
- SDKs for Python, Node.js, Ruby, PHP, Java
- 99.99% uptime SLA on paid plans
- Excellent documentation and onboarding
Cons
- Not a headless browser — Playwright integration requires extra setup
- JS rendering costs 5x more credits per call
- No fine-grained proxy pool selection on lower plans
- Rate limits can surprise high-burst workloads
Code Example
# Basic HTML scrape (uses 1 credit)
curl "http://api.scraperapi.com/?api_key=YOUR_KEY&url=https://example.com"
# With JavaScript rendering (uses 5 credits)
curl "http://api.scraperapi.com/?api_key=YOUR_KEY&url=https://example.com&render=true"
# With geotargeting (US residential proxy)
curl "http://api.scraperapi.com/?api_key=YOUR_KEY&url=https://example.com&country_code=us&premium=true"
# Structured data — Amazon product (returns JSON)
curl "http://api.scraperapi.com/structured/amazon/product?api_key=YOUR_KEY&asin=B08N5KWB9H"
# Async mode for high-throughput jobs
curl -X POST "http://async.scraperapi.com/jobs" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"apiKey":"YOUR_KEY","url":"https://example.com","render":true}'2. Browserless — Best for Headless Chrome Power Users
Browserless is not a proxy service — it's a hosted Chrome runtime. Instead of managing a fleet of headless Chrome instances yourself (memory leaks, zombie processes, scaling nightmares), you point your existing Playwright or Puppeteer scripts at their endpoint and they handle the infrastructure. The API is a drop-in replacement: change one line of code and your script runs in the cloud.
The v2 API also exposes REST endpoints for screenshots, PDFs, and content extraction if you don't want to write browser automation scripts. The self-hosted OSS version is genuinely good if you have spare compute — no vendor lock-in.
Pros
- Drop-in for Playwright / Puppeteer (change one line)
- Full browser control — cookies, sessions, file downloads
- Great for PDF generation and screenshots
- Open source (self-host for free)
- Live debugger in dashboard
Cons
- No proxy rotation or anti-bot bypass built in
- Priced per concurrent session, not per request
- Gets expensive fast at scale
- You still need to write the scraping logic yourself
Code Example
# Take a screenshot of a page
curl -X POST "https://chrome.browserless.io/screenshot?token=YOUR_TOKEN" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"url":"https://example.com","options":{"fullPage":true}}' --output screenshot.png
# Get page content (HTML)
curl -X POST "https://chrome.browserless.io/content?token=YOUR_TOKEN" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"url":"https://example.com"}'
# Execute custom Puppeteer script via /function endpoint
curl -X POST "https://chrome.browserless.io/function?token=YOUR_TOKEN" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"code":"module.exports=async({page})=>{await page.goto("https://example.com");return page.title();}"}'3. Bright Data — Best Proxy Infrastructure at Enterprise Scale
Bright Data (formerly Luminati) operates a residential proxy network of 72+ million IPs across 195 countries. That's not marketing fluff — the scale is genuinely unmatched. Their "Scraping Browser" product is a hosted Chrome with built-in CAPTCHA solving and unblocking, and their dataset marketplace lets you buy pre-scraped data if you don't want to scrape at all.
The pricing model is complex. You pay per GB of data transferred (for proxies) or per 1,000 requests (for APIs). At low volumes it's punishingly expensive. At 100M+ requests/month, the per-unit cost drops dramatically and the network quality justifies it. This is an enterprise product masquerading as a self-serve platform.
Pros
- Largest residential proxy network (72M+ IPs)
- Coverage in every country
- Pre-scraped datasets available
- Dedicated account managers at scale
- ISP, datacenter, mobile proxy options
- Serious compliance/legal infrastructure
Cons
- Extremely expensive at low-to-mid volume
- Complex pricing — easy to get surprised
- Onboarding requires sales call
- Overkill for 99% of projects
- Historical controversy around proxy sourcing
Code Example
# Web Unlocker API (managed unblocking)
curl -x brd.superproxy.io:33335 --proxy-user "brd-customer-CUSTOMER_ID-zone-unlocker:PASSWORD" -k "https://example.com"
# SERP API — Google search results
curl -X POST "https://api.brightdata.com/request" -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"zone":"serp","url":"https://www.google.com/search?q=web+scraping+api&gl=us"}'4. ZenRows — Best Anti-Bot Bypass
ZenRows positions itself as the anti-bot specialist. Their magic parameter enables a full suite of fingerprint spoofing: they rotate user agents, manage TLS fingerprints (JA3/JA4), handle browser fingerprint inconsistencies, and use premium residential proxies. On notoriously difficult targets like Cloudflare-protected pages or sites using DataDome, ZenRows often succeeds where other services fail.
The downside is volume. At $49/mo you only get 25,000 requests versus ScraperAPI's 100,000. If your targets are "normal" websites, you're paying a significant premium for capabilities you don't need. But if you're fighting Cloudflare, that premium is worth it.
Pros
- Best-in-class anti-bot bypass
- TLS/JA3 fingerprint rotation
- Premium residential proxies included
- Simple API (same pattern as ScraperAPI)
- CSS selector extraction in the API response
Cons
- Expensive per-request vs. competitors
- Overkill for simple scraping tasks
- Smaller company — support slower than Bright Data
- JS rendering uses premium credits
Code Example
# Basic request
curl "https://api.zenrows.com/v1/?apikey=YOUR_KEY&url=https://example.com"
# Full anti-bot mode: JS rendering + premium proxies + magic (fingerprint spoofing)
curl "https://api.zenrows.com/v1/?apikey=YOUR_KEY&url=https://example.com&js_render=true&premium_proxy=true&antibot=true"
# Extract specific data via CSS selectors (returns JSON)
curl "https://api.zenrows.com/v1/?apikey=YOUR_KEY&url=https://example.com&css_extractor=%7B%22title%22%3A%22h1%22%2C%22price%22%3A%22.price%22%7D"
# Geotargeting
curl "https://api.zenrows.com/v1/?apikey=YOUR_KEY&url=https://example.com&proxy_country=us"5. ScrapingBee — Easiest Onboarding
ScrapingBee has one of the cleanest developer experiences in this category. The dashboard is intuitive, the docs have working examples in every major language, and their API design is consistent. Credit costs vary by feature: 1 credit for a basic request, 5 for JS rendering, 10-25 for premium (residential) proxies.
They also offer a dedicated Google Search API that returns structured JSON — useful if SERP data is your primary use case. The main knock against ScrapingBee is that at the $49 tier, premium residential proxy usage eats through your 150K credits quickly. Budget carefully if you need residential IPs for most requests.
Pros
- Best-in-class documentation and DX
- 150K credits/mo at base tier (generous)
- Google Search API included
- Screenshots, custom cookies, custom headers
- Wait for CSS selector before returning HTML
Cons
- Residential proxies cost 10-25 credits (burns through quota)
- Anti-bot bypass less aggressive than ZenRows
- No async job queue on lower plans
- Credit model makes cost estimation tricky
Code Example
# Basic HTML scrape (1 credit)
curl "https://app.scrapingbee.com/api/v1/?api_key=YOUR_KEY&url=https://example.com"
# With JS rendering (5 credits)
curl "https://app.scrapingbee.com/api/v1/?api_key=YOUR_KEY&url=https://example.com&render_js=true"
# Wait for element before returning (avoids blank pages on SPAs)
curl "https://app.scrapingbee.com/api/v1/?api_key=YOUR_KEY&url=https://example.com&render_js=true&wait_for=.product-price"
# Google SERP structured data
curl "https://app.scrapingbee.com/api/v1/store/google?api_key=YOUR_KEY&search=web+scraping+api&country_code=us"6. Apify — Best Full Platform
Apify is a different beast from the others. Instead of a simple proxy-wrapping API, it's a full actor-based platform. Actors are serverless scraping scripts you can deploy, schedule, and chain together. The marketplace has 1,500+ pre-built actors for specific sites — Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Amazon, Google Maps — so you can scrape common targets without writing any code.
Pricing is compute-based: you're billed for actor run time plus data transfer. For simple HTTP requests, this is more expensive than ScraperAPI per call. But if you need a full pipeline — scrape, clean, store, export to CSV/Google Sheets — Apify is the most complete solution in this list.
Pros
- 1,500+ ready-made actors for popular sites
- Built-in scheduling, storage, and exports
- Crawlee framework (open source, excellent)
- Great for non-developers (no-code actors)
- Dataset API to retrieve structured output
- Proxies included in platform
Cons
- More complex pricing model (compute units)
- Overkill for simple request-response scraping
- Learning curve for the actor system
- Marketplace actors can be outdated
Code Example
# Run a pre-built actor (e.g. web-scraper) synchronously
curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/apify~web-scraper/run-sync?token=YOUR_TOKEN" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{
"startUrls": [{"url": "https://example.com"}],
"pageFunction": "async function pageFunction(context) { return { title: document.title }; }"
}'
# Get dataset results from a completed run
curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/DATASET_ID/items?token=YOUR_TOKEN&format=json"
# Run the Google Search Scraper actor
curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/apify~google-search-scraper/run-sync?token=YOUR_TOKEN" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"queries": "web scraping api 2026", "countryCode": "us", "maxPagesPerQuery": 3}'Final Verdict & Recommendation
Our Pick: ScraperAPI
After testing all six services against a mix of targets — e-commerce product pages, news sites, SERPs, and JavaScript-heavy SPAs — ScraperAPI delivers the best value for the majority of use cases. At $49/month for 100,000 successful requests (you don't pay for failures), it's hard to argue with.
The structured data endpoints for Amazon and Google are genuinely good — they save you from writing and maintaining your own parsers. The async job API handles bursts cleanly. And the documentation is some of the best in the industry: real examples, a working playground, and a support team that actually responds.
When to choose something else: Pick Browserless if you're already running Playwright scripts and just want managed Chrome. Pick ZenRows if your specific target is protected by Cloudflare or DataDome and nothing else works. Pick Bright Data if you're doing 100M+ requests/month and need the world's biggest proxy network. Pick Apify if you need a complete data pipeline platform, not just an API call.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a web scraping API?
A web scraping API is a service that handles the infrastructure complexity of web scraping for you: rotating IP addresses, solving CAPTCHAs, rendering JavaScript, managing retries, and bypassing bot detection. Instead of managing a fleet of proxies and headless browsers yourself, you send a URL to the API and receive the rendered HTML (or structured data) back.
Is web scraping legal?
Web scraping publicly available data is generally legal in most jurisdictions, but it's complicated. The landmark hiQ v. LinkedIn case (US 9th Circuit, 2022) affirmed scraping public data doesn't violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. However, scraping behind authentication, scraping personal data under GDPR, or violating a site's Terms of Service can create legal exposure. Always check the robots.txt and ToS of your target, and consult a lawyer if you're building a commercial product around scraped data.
Do scraping APIs bypass Cloudflare?
Some do, some don't. ZenRows and ScraperAPI with premium proxies have the highest success rates against Cloudflare-protected sites. Standard datacenter proxies will almost always get blocked. Residential proxies + TLS fingerprint spoofing (what ZenRows calls "magic mode") is the most effective approach, though determined sites using Cloudflare's bot management product can still detect and block automated traffic.
How many API credits do I need?
A realistic starting point: if you're scraping a few hundred pages a day for a side project, the free tier (1,000 requests/month) is sufficient to prototype. A production e-commerce price tracker checking 10 competitors daily for 500 products needs ~5,000 requests/day — that's 150,000/month, putting you in the $49-$149/month range. JavaScript-heavy sites multiply your credit usage by 5x, so factor that in.
What's the difference between residential and datacenter proxies?
Datacenter proxies come from cloud servers (AWS, GCP, etc.) and are fast and cheap, but trivially identifiable as non-human. Residential proxies are routed through real ISP-assigned IP addresses on actual consumer devices — they look like real users to target sites. Residential proxies cost significantly more (typically 5-10x) but have much higher success rates on protected targets. Mobile proxies are a step further — they use 4G/5G IP addresses and are the hardest to block.
Pricing and feature data was verified in March 2026. Web scraping API pricing changes frequently; check each provider's pricing page for current rates. This article contains affiliate links to ScraperAPI.