ScraperAPI vs Scrape.do: Pricing, Credit Costs and Features Compared

Quick verdict: which scraping API should you choose?

For a small developer project fetching ordinary pages, Scrape.do is the stronger starting point on published credit economics. Its Hobby plan includes 250,000 credits for $29, compared with ScraperAPI Hobby at 100,000 credits for $49. ScraperAPI provides twice the entry main concurrency, and its surrounding workflow tools can reduce the code needed for discovery, scheduling and delivery. Those advantages matter when infrastructure work costs more than the subscription difference.

For web scraping at scale, compare total cost per accepted record rather than price per advertised request. Rendering, residential routing and special domains consume different numbers of credits. A successful HTTP response may still contain missing fields, stale data or duplicate records. This article compares public pricing, documentation and terms; it does not claim results from a controlled speed or success-rate benchmark.

Service overviews and homepage previews

MANAGED FETCHING & WORKFLOW TOOLS

ScraperAPI

ScraperAPI manages proxy rotation, retries, anti-bot handling and optional browser rendering. Its broader suite includes a crawler for discovering linked pages, structured extraction for supported targets, and DataPipeline for recurring collection. The ScraperAPI review explains where those products fit and how their costs differ.

Sync API, async jobs and proxy mode

Structured endpoints on supported sites

Crawler discovery and budget controls

DataPipeline scheduling and delivery

Explore ScraperAPI plans

BROAD CORE FEATURE ACCESS & CREDIT VALUE

Scrape.do

Scrape.do centers on retrieving pages through a managed API with core features advertised across plans. It also offers structured Ready APIs and asynchronous jobs. Its current product range goes beyond raw HTML: assess the target endpoint and schema before deciding whether you need a custom parser.

Datacenter, residential and mobile routing

Managed rendering and browser interactions

Ready APIs with parsed JSON

Separate async concurrency pool

Explore Scrape.do plans

Feature comparison: fetching, parsing and automation

Structured data: both providers now offer it

ScraperAPI Structured Data Endpoints return parsed data for supported targets. Its autoparse option is also target-specific. Scrape.do Ready APIs provide parsed JSON for supported sites, including ecommerce and search use cases; supported async plugins add structured batch workflows. Neither product makes every website a stable, universal JSON API. Check pagination, variants, availability fields, sponsored results, currency and locale against your own data model.

Do not confuse a JSON response with extraction quality. Scrape.do’s generic rendered returnJSON option exposes browser network information rather than automatically producing your chosen product fields. ScraperAPI DataPipeline can wrap arbitrary-site HTML in JSONL, while CSV output depends on structured sources. Scrape.do also automatically routes some Amazon requests to its structured API, so an existing HTML parser may need adjustment.

Rendering, interactions and session handling

Start with an unrendered fetch and enable JavaScript only when the required content is absent. Scrape.do documents ordered browser actions for clicking, filling, scrolling and waiting; ScraperAPI documents selector waits and rendering options. These settings help with dynamic pages, but resource blocking can remove scripts or API calls that your data depends on. Validate the result after each optimization.

Sticky sessions are temporary routing aids. Scrape.do documents session replacement after failures and country-scoped sessions; ScraperAPI documents restrictions on combining session numbers with premium modes. Neither should be treated as a permanently dedicated IP. A mobile user agent also does not automatically mean a carrier-network address.

Scheduling, crawling and result delivery

ScraperAPI has the clearer packaged workflow for teams that need URL discovery followed by recurring jobs. DataPipeline supports scheduled runs and webhook delivery, with up to 100,000 inputs through its documented CSV route and up to 500 pasted directly. Its documented results retention is up to 30 days, so export to your own durable storage.

Scrape.do’s async service provides job IDs, polling, cancellation and webhooks. Its additional worker pool is independent of the main API pool, but both spend the same subscription credits. Retrieve temporary results before their ExpiresAt timestamp. If you need a full programmable workflow platform, the contextual ScraperAPI vs Apify and Scrape.do vs Apify comparisons explain that tradeoff.

Pricing analysis: subscriptions, credits and real workload cost

All amounts below are published USD figures checked October 5, 2026. Monthly prices are month-to-month commitments; annual invoices are prepaid totals. Plan names are not equivalent workloads, and credits are not universally one page each. Confirm taxes, allocation timing, current promotions and renewal terms before purchasing.

ScraperAPI plans

* Professional and Advanced display these totals alongside separate promotional bonus labels. Do not add the bonus twice; confirm the final allocation at checkout. Enterprise capacity and support are negotiated.

Scrape.do plans

Scrape.do annual billing is arranged manually through support. Listed annual totals equal ten monthly payments for twelve months: a calculated 16.67% reduction, despite the “up to 20%” headline. Confirm annual credit allocation and renewal details.

Request multipliers change the comparison

On ordinary-domain Hobby credit arithmetic, Scrape.do’s allocation costs $0.116 per 1,000 credits and ScraperAPI’s costs $0.49. The subscription itself is $20 less, a calculated 40.8% lower monthly entry commitment. These numbers do not establish universal savings: low utilization, domain pricing, output quality and engineering effort can change the result.

Special domains and product-specific charges

ScraperAPI currently lists ecommerce examples such as Amazon, Walmart and eBay at 5 base credits, Google/Bing SERPs at 25, and LinkedIn at 30. Scrape.do’s current reference lists Amazon at 1, Google at 10 and LinkedIn at 30; some complex targets cost much more. Requested modes and anti-bot handling can change charges. These examples are documented reference profiles, not proof that the two providers return the same page, fields or locale.

Check the exact URL and configuration before scaling. ScraperAPI provides a URL-cost estimator, max_cost control and the sa-credit-cost response header. Scrape.do exposes Scrape.do-Request-Cost and remaining-credit metadata. Treat combinations as documented mode totals rather than blindly adding every multiplier.

Free access, renewals and refund conditions

ScraperAPI advertises a seven-day trial with 5,000 credits, while its pricing FAQ and billing documentation describe an ongoing free account with 1,000 credits and five concurrent connections. These are separate allowances; confirm the signup balance. Scrape.do offers 1,000 monthly credits without a card, five main requests and two separate async slots. A 25-credit mode uses either 1,000-credit allowance in just 40 billable responses.

ScraperAPI says unused credits do not roll over at renewal. Hobby, Startup and Business users who exhaust credits need to upgrade or contact support; Scaling and higher tiers advertise PAYG with spending controls. Scrape.do stops requests at the allowance unless you upgrade or buy more credits. Confirm its rollover, purchased-credit expiry and annual allocation details rather than assuming non-expiring balances.

ScraperAPI advertises a seven-day no-questions refund; request it through support, since canceling renewal alone does not issue a refund. Scrape.do’s initial refund terms require a request within three days and cover unused credits, excluding successful used credits; card commissions may be deducted. Its separate forgotten-renewal clauses have additional timing and refund conditions. Both recurring billing and cancellation should be reviewed before an annual commitment.

Performance comparison: test accepted records, latency and cost

There is no defensible universal speed winner here. We did not run the same URLs, countries, modes and parsers against both services. Published uptime promises and network-wide success claims use different definitions and cannot replace target-specific measurements. ScraperAPI’s published 99.9% uptime guarantee concerns service availability, while a successful request still may not produce the data you need.

A fair pilot procedure

Billable success and error handling

ScraperAPI documents charges for 200 and 404 responses, plus client-canceled requests when it was not allowed its recommended 70 seconds to complete. Scrape.do’s request-cost reference includes 2XX and target 400, 404 and 410 responses; provider validation errors are distinct. Its status documentation lists concurrency 429, failed 502 and client-canceled 510 as non-billable. Parser rejection is not automatically an invoice reversal: inspect the response and, where applicable, ask support to review invalid content.

Bound your worker pool and retry with backoff instead of opening unlimited connections. The MDN explanation of HTTP 429 describes rate limiting and the optional Retry-After header. Distinguish provider concurrency errors from a target site’s own rate limit, and log credit headers alongside status, response format and acceptance outcome.

Which provider fits your use case?

For large workloads, compare an explicit monthly volume estimate and support agreement. ScraperAPI publishes higher upper self-service thread limits and PAYG on selected tiers; Scrape.do includes extra async workers and offers custom infrastructure. Neither plan table establishes better enterprise reliability. Confirm incident escalation, data handling, contractual uptime remedies and cost limits for your production account.

For no-code desktop extraction, see Octoparse vs Scrape.do and ScraperAPI vs Octoparse. For programmable hosted workflows and reusable scrapers, read Octoparse vs Apify. Those products can be a better fit when building your own parser and queue is the main obstacle.

Integration and responsible collection

Keep API tokens on your server, encode target URLs safely and avoid logging credential-bearing request URLs. Match the timeout to the chosen service and validate content type before parsing. If using Scrape.do Proxy Mode, review its certificate trust requirements; prefer a scoped trust configuration rather than disabling TLS verification throughout your application.

Plan collection around permission, applicable terms, privacy requirements and appropriate crawl rates. The Robots Exclusion Protocol specification, RFC 9309 defines how crawlers interpret robots.txt; those directives are not access authorization. An unblocking feature is a retrieval capability, not permission to collect every available dataset.

Pros and cons of each provider

Frequently asked questions

Final verdict: choose by target and workflow

Start with Scrape.do when your priority is affordable managed requests and you already control parsing and scheduling. Its published entry economics, browser actions and additional async pool make it worth testing. Compare Ready APIs against your required schema before implementing a custom parser.

Choose ScraperAPI when its crawler, scheduled DataPipeline and delivery tools reduce meaningful engineering work. The higher entry main concurrency can also help, but price the exact domain and product you use. Both providers merit a pilot when output quality and geographic consistency matter more than the headline allowance.