---
title: ScrapingBee
slug: scrapingbee
url: "https://toolweight.com/options/scrapingbee"
homepage: "https://www.scrapingbee.com"
categories: browser-automation-apis
last_verified: 2026-07-01
license: CC-BY-4.0
---

# ScrapingBee

> One-call HTML API with JavaScript rendering and premium proxy tiers

ScrapingBee is a single GET request that returns rendered HTML, a screenshot or extracted data, with proxy quality selected by how many credits you are willing to spend. There is no CDP endpoint and no session to hold open, so multi-step flows are awkward by design. For one-shot fetches at predictable per-request cost it remains one of the least surprising products in the category.

## Identity

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| Name | ScrapingBee |
| Company | ScrapingBee |
| One-liner | One-call HTML API with JavaScript rendering and premium proxy tiers |
| Site | https://www.scrapingbee.com |
| Docs | https://www.scrapingbee.com/documentation/ |
| Founded | 2018 |
| Open source | No |
| Compared in | 1 |

## Where it is compared

### [Browser APIs](https://toolweight.com/compare/browser-automation-apis)
Ranked **#13 of 13** on default weights.
| Field | Value | Confidence | Verified | Source | Note |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Anti-bot pass rate | - | Unknown | - | - | Panel not yet run. |
| Stealth mode | ● | Vendor-claimed | 2026-07-01 | https://www.scrapingbee.com/documentation/ | Delivered by paying more credits for premium/stealth proxy tiers. |
| CAPTCHA solving | ◐ | Inferred | - | - | Some challenges handled transparently; no general solver. |
| Residential proxy | metered-extra | Inferred | 2026-07-01 | - | Premium proxies cost a multiple of the base credit price per request. |
| Cold start | - | Unknown | - | - | - |
| CDP endpoint | ○ | Inferred | - | - | There is no session to connect to, it is a request/response API. |
| Playwright | ○ | Inferred | - | - | - |
| Puppeteer | ○ | Inferred | - | - | - |
| Session persistence | ○ | Inferred | - | - | - |
| Live view | ○ | Inferred | - | - | - |
| Session replay | ○ | Inferred | - | - | - |
| Max concurrency | 100 sessions | Inferred | - | - | Approximate ceiling on the top self-serve plan; entry plans are much lower. |
| File downloads | ○ | Inferred | - | - | - |
| Chrome extensions | ○ | Inferred | - | - | - |
| Browser regions | global | Inferred | - | - | Country targeting including Australia; you do not choose where the browser runs. |
| Agent API | ○ | Inferred | - | - | - |
| MCP server | - | Unknown | - | - | - |
| Human handoff | ○ | Inferred | - | - | - |
| Pricing model | per-credit | Vendor-claimed | 2026-07-01 | https://www.scrapingbee.com/pricing/ | Credits per request, multiplied by proxy tier and JS rendering. |
| Per browser-hour | - | Unknown | - | - | Not time-billed; converting requests to hours would be meaningless. |
| Free tier | ◐ | Inferred | - | - | One-off trial credits. |
| GitHub stars | - | Unknown | - | - | - |
| Funding stage | bootstrapped | Community-reported | - | - | Long-running independent product with no reported raise. |
| Open-source core | ○ | Inferred | - | - | - |
| Positioning | Scraping API that handles proxies and headless browsers for you | Inferred | - | - | - |
| Launched | 2018 | Inferred | - | - | - |

**Verdict.** Honest, boring and predictable, which in this category is a compliment. Per-request pricing makes forecasting trivial and the docs never pretend it is a browser API. The moment your workflow needs three steps and a cookie jar, you are on the wrong product.

## Alternatives

- [Airtop](https://toolweight.com/options/airtop), Natural-language browser API, describe the page, skip the selectors
- [Anchor Browser](https://toolweight.com/options/anchor-browser), Cloud browsers built around authenticated sessions and human takeover
- [Apify](https://toolweight.com/options/apify), Actor platform for scraping and agents, with Crawlee as the open-source core
- [Bright Data Browser API](https://toolweight.com/options/bright-data-browser-api), CDP browsers on a 70M+ residential IP network with challenge handling built in
- [Browserbase](https://toolweight.com/options/browserbase), Managed headless browsers for AI agents, with Stagehand as the SDK
- [Browserless](https://toolweight.com/options/browserless), Self-hostable headless Chrome service; BrowserQL for bot-heavy sites
- [Cloudflare Browser Rendering](https://toolweight.com/options/cloudflare-browser-rendering), Puppeteer and Playwright bindings for Workers, plus REST render endpoints
- [Hyperbrowser](https://toolweight.com/options/hyperbrowser), Agent-first browsers with hosted scrape, crawl and CUA endpoints
- [Kernel](https://toolweight.com/options/kernel), Fast-starting browsers plus a runtime for deploying browser agents
- [Self-hosted Playwright](https://toolweight.com/options/playwright-self-hosted), The baseline: run Chromium in your own container and own everything
- [Steel.dev](https://toolweight.com/options/steel-dev), Open-source browser API for AI agents, hosted or self-run
- [ZenRows](https://toolweight.com/options/zenrows), Scraper API plus a CDP scraping browser on a shared residential pool

## Licence and attribution

Data from toolweight (https://toolweight.com), licensed CC-BY-4.0.

- Licence: [CC-BY-4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
- Canonical HTML: https://toolweight.com/options/scrapingbee
- Machine-readable: https://toolweight.com/options/scrapingbee.md · https://toolweight.com/api/v1 · https://toolweight.com/mcp
- toolweight takes no affiliate revenue and sells no placements. Corrections: https://toolweight.com/suggest