An In-Depth Review of ScrapingBee

ScrapingBee is a popular web scraping API that simplifies data collection by handling complex challenges such as JavaScript rendering, proxy rotation, and CAPTCHA solving. Designed for both developers and businesses, ScrapingBee allows users to extract web data without the hassle of managing infrastructure or handling anti-scraping measures manually.

The product has received positive user feedback, earning a 4.9 out of 5 rating on Capterra based on 118 reviews. Many users praise its ease of use, reliable performance, and strong customer support. In this review, we’ll take a detailed look at its features, performance, pricing, and overall value.

General Overview

ScrapingBee was founded in 2019 and was originally called ScrapingNinja before rebranding to its current name about two months later. The company is based in France and was created to simplify web scraping by handling proxy rotation, JavaScript rendering, and anti-bot challenges within a single API.

Unlike traditional proxy services that require users to configure their own scraping infrastructure, ScrapingBee provides an all-in-one API that takes care of these complexities.

In 2024, they added the Logs and Analytics feature on their dashboard, which gives you a detailed breakdown of your usage and charges to better track your spending. This improvement also shows that they are actively working to make the product better.

Something else worth mentioning is the speed of their API, while I have come across comments online from users saying ScrapingBee is slow, that was not my experience.

When I tested the API, it successfully ran a JavaScript-rendered request and took a screenshot in 7 seconds, which is reasonable considering it had to load, render, and extract data from a JavaScript-heavy page. Of course, speed will always depend on the complexity of the target website, but overall, I found ScrapingBee’s performance acceptable and in line with other scraping services.

Altogether, ScrapingBee is a powerful tool for data extraction, but it does have some limitations.
One challenge is its lack of flexibility for more complex scraping tasks. While extracting basic data is straightforward, I discussed that things get a bit more tricky when handling pagination, for example, when for an Amazon or eBay search result (Which is what was used for the test).

If you were building your own scraper, you could programmatically navigate through multiple pages and fine-tune scraping behavior, but with ScrapingBee’s API, achieving the same outcome is not always clear. And their documentation does not provide much guidance on this matter which could be frustrating for users who need greater control over how their scraper behaves.

One thing I also found missing was an integrated cloud infrastructure for handling extracted data. Since ScrapingBee focuses strictly on data extraction, users need to find separate hosting solutions to store and manage their scraped information. While this may not be an issue for users who already have cloud storage in place, an all-in-one solution would save time and reduce the need to juggle multiple services.

However, for those in need of a more advanced scraping solution than ScrapingBee doesnt yet offer, a top alternative is the Bright Data Scraper API. Unlike ScrapingBee’s general-purpose scraping API, Bright Data offers dedicated Scraper APIs for over 100 websites, including major platforms like Amazon, Google, LinkedIn, and eBay. These pre-built scrapers automatically handle pagination, dynamic content loading, and anti-bot measures, making it easier to extract structured data with minimal effort.

While ScrapingBee is great for users who want a simple, API-driven scraping experience, those who need greater customization, built-in cloud infrastructure, or site-specific scrapers may find Bright Data’s solution more comprehensive.

What are the Different Products Offered?

AI Web Scraping API

ScrapingBee’s AI Web Scraping API is a new product that is still in its beta stage; it is used to automate data extraction. The API is designed to simplify data retrieval by allowing users to specify their extraction requirements in natural language, eliminating the need for intricate DOM analysis or manual selector configurations. Instead of writing complex XPath or CSS selectors, users can provide simple instructions like “Return the price of the product, description,” or any other information you would want it to return, and the API will process and extract the data you asked for.

You can also query the API following JSON rules and get a structured JSON output format, making it easy to integrate the extracted data into various applications and analytics workflows.

One of the standout features of this AI-powered API is its ability to adapt to changes in web page structures automatically. Traditional scrapers often break when a website undergoes minor modifications, requiring continuous maintenance. ScrapingBee’s AI Web Scraping API eliminates this issue by dynamically understanding page elements, ensuring consistent data extraction even as website structure changes.

For practical applications, the API can be used for tasks such as e-commerce data extraction, contact information retrieval, and news aggregation. Businesses can efficiently gather product details, prices, and customer reviews from online marketplaces, helping with competitive research and pricing strategies. It can also intelligently detect and extract contact information, such as email addresses, to aid outbound marketing campaigns. Additionally, it can summarize articles from multiple news sources, providing tailored insights based on user-defined parameters.

Screenshots API

ScrapingBee’s Screenshots API offers a streamlined solution for capturing high-quality website snapshots through a simple API call. This functionality is particularly beneficial for developers and businesses that require automated, real-time visual representations of web pages without the overhead of managing headless browsers or dealing with complex rendering issues.

One of the notable features of this API is its ability to render pages using a real Chrome browser, ensuring that the captured screenshots accurately reflect the website’s appearance, including dynamic content and JavaScript-rendered elements. You can customize the viewport dimensions to simulate different device screens, which can be useful for responsive design testing. The API also supports full-page rendering, meaning you can take screenshots of entire web pages, not just the visible portion.

The API also provides options to execute custom JavaScript on the target page before capturing the screenshot, enabling users to interact with page elements or wait for specific content to load. This level of control ensures that the screenshots capture the desired state of the web page. Furthermore, users can set custom cookies and headers, which is useful for accessing content behind authentication or simulating different user sessions.

Implementing the Screenshots API is straightforward. For example, using Python, a developer can utilize the ScrapingBeeClient to request a screenshot by setting the appropriate parameters, such as enabling JavaScript rendering and specifying the desired viewport size. The API’s documentation provides clear guidance and code samples in various programming languages, facilitating quick integration into existing workflows.

In terms of performance, the API is fast and efficient; it can handle large-scale screenshot requests.

Google search API

ScrapingBee’s Google Search API offers a robust solution for developers and businesses seeking to programmatically access and extract data from Google search results. By providing a straightforward interface, this API eliminates the complexities associated with scraping search engine results, such as handling proxies, managing headless browsers, and navigating anti-bot measures.

One of the key advantages of ScrapingBee’s Google Search API is its ability to deliver comprehensive search data with minimal configuration. Users can specify parameters such as the search query, desired number of results, language, and country code to tailor the search to their specific needs. The API supports both desktop and mobile user agents, allowing for versatile data collection that reflects different browsing contexts.

The API’s output includes much information beyond standard organic search results. It captures metadata such as the total number of results and the number of pages, as well as detailed data on local results, advertisements, related queries, and featured snippets. This granularity enables users to perform in-depth analysis of search engine result pages (SERPs), which is invaluable for applications like SEO monitoring, market research, and competitive analysis.

Implementing the Google Search API is straightforward, with support for multiple programming languages, including Python, Node.js, Java, Ruby, PHP, and Go. The API requires an API key and a search query as mandatory parameters, with additional optional parameters available to refine the search. The documentation provides clear examples and guidance, facilitating quick integration into existing systems.

In terms of performance, users have reported that ScrapingBee’s services are efficient and reliable, capable of handling large-scale data extraction tasks with ease. The API’s ability to bypass sophisticated anti-bot mechanisms has been particularly praised, making it a dependable choice for accessing and capturing content from sites with stringent security measures.

Integration

The integration offers a range of functionalities, including the ability to extract data from web pages, capture screenshots, and monitor API usage. Users can specify target URLs and define extraction parameters through a user-friendly interface, facilitating the retrieval of structured data from websites. This approach democratizes web scraping, making it accessible to users who may not possess traditional coding skills.

A notable feature of this integration is its compatibility with over a thousand applications within the Make ecosystem. This extensive connectivity enables users to design comprehensive workflows where data extracted via ScrapingBee can be automatically routed to various destinations such as Google Sheets, Slack, or custom databases. For instance, a user could set up a scenario where product prices are scraped from an e-commerce site and then logged into a spreadsheet for real-time price monitoring.

The implementation process is straightforward. Users can select ScrapingBee from Make’s library of applications and incorporate it into their workflows by configuring the desired actions and parameters.
In terms of performance, the integration leverages ScrapingBee’s robust infrastructure to handle complex web pages, including those that require JavaScript rendering. This capability ensures that users can extract accurate and comprehensive data from a wide range of websites.

Proxies

ScrapingBee automates the process of proxy rotation and management, drawing from its proxy network that spans 249 countries. The platform offers multiple proxy options to cater to different scraping needs. By default, users benefit from a Rotating Proxy setup that can handle standard web scraping tasks.

For more demanding scenarios, the Premium Proxy option is available. By setting the premium_proxy parameter to true, you gain the flexibility to choose a proxy based on a specific country simply by providing the relevant country code (for example, country_code=de).

For websites that are particularly difficult to scrape due to stringent anti-scraping measures, ScrapingBee recommends using their Stealth Proxy, which is currently in beta. This option is designed to provide an extra layer of evasion for the most resilient targets. Additionally, for organizations with established proxy infrastructures, ScrapingBee supports the integration of external proxies through the own_proxy parameter, giving you greater control over the routing of your requests to meet specific operational requirements.

Pricing and Plans for ScrapingBee

ScrapingBee offers a tiered pricing structure designed to accommodate a range of web scraping needs, from individual developers to large-scale enterprise operations. The plans are structured based on the number of API credits provided per month, allowing users to select a package that aligns with their specific requirements.

The entry-level Freelance plan is priced at $49 per month, offering 150,000 API credits. This plan is suitable for individuals or small projects with moderate scraping demands. For growing startups, the Startup plan is available at $99 per month, providing 1,000,000 API credits to support more intensive data extraction activities.

Businesses with substantial scraping needs might consider the Business plan, which costs $249 per month and includes 3,000,000 API credits.

For enterprises requiring extensive data collection, the Business+ plan offers 9,000,000 API credits at $599 per month.

It’s important to note that the consumption of API credits varies depending on the features utilized. For instance, a standard request using the default rotating proxy without JavaScript rendering consumes 1 API credit. However, enabling JavaScript rendering increases the cost to 5 credits per request. Opting for premium proxy services further increases credit usage, with requests consuming up to 25 credits when both premium proxies and JavaScript rendering are employed.

The most resource-intensive option, the Stealth Proxy with JavaScript rendering, requires 75 credits per request. However, ScrapingBee offers you a free 1,000 API Credit that you can use for 14 days to test the product before committing to a plan.

How to use ScrapingBee

The Setup Process

Begin by creating an account on the ScrapingBee website. Upon registration, you’ll gain access to the dashboard, where your unique API key is readily available.

You make requests right from the dashboard to test out the various API and features they have before using them in your code.

How to Manage Subscription and Usage

To adjust your subscription settings, log in to your dashboard and navigate to the “Upgrade Plan” section. Here, you can view your current plan and upgrade or downgrade your subscription. Business and Enterprise users get the team management feature to invite multiple users and set an API key, API credits, and concurrency quota for each.

To monitor your API usage, the dashboard provides real-time statistics, including the number of requests made, the time it took to get a response, the cost, the status code, and the time the request was made.

Documentation and Support

The ScrapingBee Documentation provides insights into the platform’s capabilities. It encompasses various sections, including the HTML API, Google Search API, Proxy Mode, Data Extraction, and JavaScript Scenarios. Each section provides an overview of available parameters, accompanied by code examples in multiple programming languages such as Python, cURL, Node.js, Java, Ruby, PHP, and Go. This multilingual support facilitates easy integration across diverse development environments.

For instance, the HTML API documentation outlines parameters like api_key, url, render_js, and wait, among others, providing clear descriptions and usage examples.

ScrapingBee offers a Knowledge Base that addresses common questions and issues. It is categorized into API, Billing, Account, and Getting Started sections, allowing users to find relevant information quickly. Articles cover various topics, from handling request failures to managing concurrency and providing practical solutions to common challenges.

For personalized assistance, ScrapingBee provides support through a chat feature accessible on their website and dashboard.

Conclusion

ScrapingBee offers a developer-friendly web scraping solution that simplifies the data extraction process with its AI-powered scraping capabilities, proxy management, screenshot functionality, and integration with a no-code platform like Make.

The platform’s Google Search API provides a reliable way to extract search results at scale from Google. However, if you require a more comprehensive solution with pre-built features and greater control over your applications and data extraction process, ScrapingBee may not meet your needs. Try top alternatives like the Bright Data Scraper API, which has dedicated scraper APIs for 100+ websites.