ScraperAPI review

Pricing and plans

ScraperAPI sells monthly credit subscriptions (as of October 2026, per its pricing page), 10% cheaper billed annually.

The step that matters is Hobby to Startup: three times the price for ten times the credits, so 1,000 credits fall from $0.49 to $0.15. Hobby's 100,000 credits buy 100,000 plain requests, 10,000 rendered ones or just 4,000 premium + render requests. If your targets need premium proxies, price the job on Startup.

How credits add up

Anti-bot bypasses (Cloudflare, DataDome, Akamai and others) add 10 credits; country_code, session_number, device_type, output_format and autoparse are free. Two billing rules belong in your client code:

• Only 200 and 404 responses are charged. Other failures are free, but a crawl full of dead links pays for every 404.
• Requests you cancel before 70 seconds are charged too. ScraperAPI recommends a 70-second client timeout; a 30-second default means paying for responses you never read.

The API in practice

Everything goes through https://api.scraperapi.com with api_key, an encoded url and optional switches:

# Normal request: 1 credit
curl --max-time 70 -G "https://api.scraperapi.com/" \
  --data-urlencode "api_key=$SCRAPERAPI_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "url=https://example.com/products?page=2"

# Rendered through premium (residential) proxies: 25 credits
curl --max-time 70 -G "https://api.scraperapi.com/" \
  --data-urlencode "api_key=$SCRAPERAPI_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "url=https://example.com/products?page=2" \
  -d render=true -d premium=true

Escalate deliberately: normal first, render=true only for pages that need JavaScript, ultra_premium only for domains that fail everything else. Proxyway found the top configurations of credit-based APIs costing up to 100 times their base rate.

MCP server for AI agents

ScraperAPI documents a remote MCP server at https://mcp.scraperapi.com/mcp and publishes an MIT-licensed local server (pip install scraperapi-mcp-server, or Docker) that reads the key from API_KEY. Its scrape tool takes the API's switches (render, premium, ultra_premium, country_code and more), alongside structured-data tools for Google, Amazon, Walmart, eBay and Redfin, plus crawler and AI-parser tools. The local config from the project's README:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ScraperAPI": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "scraperapi_mcp_server"],
      "env": { "API_KEY": "<YOUR_SCRAPERAPI_API_KEY>" }
    }
  }
}

We could not confirm how MCP calls are billed. At the API's rates, a Google search (25 credits) is $12.25 per 1,000 on Hobby, several times what ScrapingBee or PacketStream charge (see the our AI-agent search & fetch guide).

Independent evidence

In Proxyway's Web Scraping API Report 2025 (tests October 2025, published 3 December 2025; 15 protected sites at 2 requests per second) ScraperAPI averaged 68.95%, sixth of ten. The average hides a split:

• 99.97% on G2, where ScrapingBee managed 5% and Oxylabs 0%.
• 0% on Hyatt and Lowe's, protected by Kasada and Akamai respectively.
• A 13.92-second average, against 25.46 s for ScrapingBee and 11.15 s for Zyte, first in that test.

ScrapeOps' fingerprint test (January 2026, higher is better) gave it 27.81, near ScrapingBee (24.76) and far behind Zyte (80.48). Its Cloudflare playbook (June 2026) put scraping APIs as a group at about 97% on Cloudflare sites, a category figure rather than a ScraperAPI one. Caveats: Proxyway uses affiliate links and ScrapeOps runs a paid proxy aggregator. Trustpilot shows 4.5 from only 42 reviews. If your list includes Kasada or Akamai sites, spend the trial credits on those first.

Where it fits

Our guides make picks by use case. ScraperAPI has no pick in them; it appears in the comparison tables.

• Strongest independent evidence: Zyte API, first of ten in Proxyway's 2025 report at 93.14%, against ScraperAPI's 68.95% with 0% on Hyatt and Lowe's.
• Flat price with rendering included: Bright Data Web Unlocker at $1.50 per 1,000 (97.90% in Proxyway's 2024 report; it skipped 2025), against $12.25 for premium + render on Hobby.
• Every feature on every plan: ScrapingBee, with premium + JS at $4.90 per 1,000 on its $49 plan and 84.47% in Proxyway's 2025 benchmark.
• Search for AI agents: ScrapingBee ($1.96 per 1,000 on its $49 plan) or PacketStream ($2.50 per 1,000, no subscription), against $12.25 per 1,000 Google searches here.

Where ScraperAPI still fits: sites it handles well, such as G2 (99.97% in Proxyway's 2025 test, where ScrapingBee managed 5% and Oxylabs 0%); jobs where speed matters (13.92 s average against ScrapingBee's 25.46 s); and Amazon, Walmart, eBay or Google work, where fixed per-domain credit rates keep bills predictable. Compare it directly in ScraperAPI vs ScrapingBee, try your own volumes in the cost calculator, and see how picks are chosen on the methodology page.

Pros and cons