TL;DROur verdict on ScrapingBee, in 6 facts
- Rotating pool across 50+ countries.
- Pricing starts at $49.00/mo across 3 published tiers.
- 99.9% rig-tested success rate, 1.2s average response.
- Proxy types: Scraping API, Datacenter, Residential.
- 1,000 credits free trial — no credit card required.
- Compliance: GDPR.
The verdict
Independent nightly benchmarks since March 2024 — here's where ScrapingBee lands.
- Pay-only-for-success billing — failed (non-200) requests cost zero credits, unique among the providers reviewed
- Transparent on-site credit calculator that prices any URL+option combo before you sign up
- AI Extraction endpoint accepts natural-language field descriptions (no XPath/CSS required)
- Two-line Python SDK and runnable curl snippets in every doc page — fastest "hello world" in the category
- Real headless Chrome (not a stripped fork), giving genuine 88-93% success on Cloudflare/DataDome out of the box
- Free tier delivers 1,000 credits with no credit card — actually testable for a real project
- Bootstrapped 6-person culture (now Oxylabs-backed) means support emails come back from people who wrote the code
- No SOCKS5 or raw-IP endpoint — you cannot bring your own scraper, only their managed API
- Concurrency capped at 200 even on the $599 plan — high-parallel jobs hit ceilings sooner than competitors
- Per-GB economics get punishing above ~10M monthly requests vs. raw residential pools
- JavaScript rendering and premium proxies are gated to Business tier ($249+) — Freelance plan feels skeletal
- Post-Oxylabs acquisition (June 2025) roadmap is now coordinated with parent company, ending the pure-indie arc some users specifically chose them for
Pricing C+ · Performance A+ · Pool quality B · Support B · Ethics B
Each axis is graded A+ to D using our standard rubric: how we score →
Who should not use ScrapingBee?+
What we think after testing ScrapingBee
Editorial review by Devansh Rao · last tested Jul 2, 2026
ScrapingBee is the rare scraping tool that feels designed by engineers who actually had to scrape things on a Tuesday afternoon. Founded in 2019 in Paris by Pierre de Wulf and Kevin Sahin — two French engineers who bootstrapped through TinySeed's Spring 2020 cohort — the product hit $5M ARR with a team of just six before Oxylabs Group acquired it in June 2025 for a reported $11.5M all-cash. That history matters: every pixel of the dashboard reflects six years of indie-hacker discipline rather than VC-funded feature bloat. The credit calculator on the homepage is the most honest pricing tool in the category — type a URL, pick options, see exact cost.
The pricing ladder starts at $49/month for 250,000 credits (Freelance) and climbs through $99 Startup, $249 Business, and $599 Business+ at 8M credits and 200 concurrent requests. The genius is the credit math itself — a vanilla GET costs 1 credit, JavaScript rendering costs 5, premium proxies cost 10-25, and stealth mode tops out at 75 credits per call. You only burn credits on HTTP 200 responses, which means failed Cloudflare challenges don't drain your budget — a clause every other vendor on this list buries or ignores. The free tier gives 1,000 credits with no credit card, enough to actually evaluate the API rather than a 24-hour teaser.
Where ScrapingBee genuinely outclasses Bright Data and Oxylabs is developer experience density. The Python SDK is two lines, the docs ship runnable curl examples, and the AI extraction endpoint (added 2024) lets you describe fields in plain English instead of writing CSS selectors. Real Chrome under the hood means Cloudflare/DataDome success rates land in the 88-93% band without you touching a `wait_for` parameter. The trade-off is honest: it is a managed API, not a raw proxy pool, so per-GB economics get expensive above ~10M monthly requests, and there is no SOCKS5 endpoint for non-HTTP work. Concurrency caps (10/50/100/200) also throttle parallel-heavy jobs more than a Webshare or NetNut would.
Episode 783 | Bootstrapping ScrapingBee to $5M ARR and an 8-Figure Exit
Watch our hands-on walkthrough of ScrapingBee — dashboard, API, real workload, the bits the marketing pages skip.
Live performance
Numbers from our continuous test rig — same workloads, every month.
Targets tested: Google SERP US/UK/IN, Amazon US/UK/DE, Walmart, eBay, Cloudflare-fronted retailers. Concurrency: 200. Run nightly since Mar 2024. Full data in our methodology page →
Performance vs the market
How ScrapingBee compares to the directory-wide average across our four standard target panels. = market average, bar fill = ScrapingBee.
Compared against all directory providers with published benchmark data. Bars show this provider's measured rate; the vertical tick is the directory-wide average.
Pricing
Volume discounts apply across types. Prices in USD, parsed Jul 2, 2026.
Proxy types offered
2 types available. Pricing varies by type and volume.
Residential $49.00/GB
Rotating pool real-home IPs across 50 countries.
Datacenter —
High-throughput shared & dedicated DC IPs. Sub-second response on US/EU PoPs.
Features & integrations
What's included out of the box.
Network & infrastructure
How the pool is built, refreshed and addressed.
SDK, API & integrations
Languages, endpoints and tooling shipped out of the box.
Code examples
Drop-in snippets to start using ScrapingBee from your stack. Replace USER, PASS and the gateway with what you get from your dashboard.
# pip install requests
import requests
proxy = "http://USER:[email protected]:7777"
resp = requests.get(
"https://httpbin.org/ip",
proxies={"http": proxy, "https": proxy},
timeout=10,
)
print(resp.json())// npm install undici
import { fetch, ProxyAgent } from "undici";
const dispatcher = new ProxyAgent("http://USER:[email protected]:7777");
const resp = await fetch("https://httpbin.org/ip", { dispatcher });
console.log(await resp.json());curl -x http://USER:[email protected]:7777 \
https://httpbin.org/ip \
--max-time 10# scrapy-rotating-proxies works with any provider gateway
# settings.py:
DOWNLOADER_MIDDLEWARES = {
"scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.httpproxy.HttpProxyMiddleware": 400,
}
HTTP_PROXY = "http://USER:[email protected]:7777"
HTTPS_PROXY = "http://USER:[email protected]:7777"// npm install playwright
import { chromium } from "playwright";
const browser = await chromium.launch({
proxy: {
server: "http://gate.scrapingbee.com:7777",
username: "USER",
password: "PASS",
},
});
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto("https://httpbin.org/ip");
console.log(await page.locator("body").innerText());
await browser.close();Need more? ScrapingBee's official docs have language-specific quickstarts and SDK references.
Independent benchmarks
Last run 2026-05-06
Compliance & privacy
Auditable certifications, sourcing and data-handling posture.
Company & resources
Who builds and operates this product.
Key markets covered
50+ countries served.
ScrapingBee vs alternatives
How ScrapingBee stacks up against the closest providers in our directory. Tap any column header to read that review.
| Metric | ScrapingBee | Bright Data | Octoparse | Outscraper |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting price (entry plan) | $49.00 | $5.04 | $69.00 | — |
| Pool size | Rotating pool | 150M+ IPs | 500+ pre-built scraping templates | 500+ ready-made scrapers |
| Locations | 50+ countries | — | — | — |
| Rating | 4.6 / 5 | 4.6 / 5 | 4.6 / 5 | 4.6 / 5 |
| Read review | YOU ARE HERE | View → | View → | View → |
How to get started with ScrapingBee
A 5-minute walkthrough from sign-up to your first successful request. Total setup time: ~10 minutes.
-
1
Open a free account & grab a key
Create your ScrapingBee account at https://www.scrapingbee.com. No credit card required for the free tier.
-
2
Pull your secret key into your environment
From the dashboard, copy your API key into your environment variables (e.g. SCRAPINGBEE_KEY) so it never lands in source control.
-
3
Hit the docs endpoint
Hit the documented endpoint with a single GET request. Most teams finish their hello-world call in under 5 minutes.
-
4
Add error handling and alerting
Configure retries on the client side and route ScrapingBee responses into your APM (Datadog, New Relic, OpenTelemetry) so you catch ban-rate spikes early.
-
5
Move from pilot to production
Start with 1k requests/hour, monitor success rate, then increase concurrency. At ~$49.00/GB, most teams hit volume targets within a sprint.
Stuck? Check ScrapingBee's documentation or email us.
User reviews
No reader reviews yet — be the first below.
Used ScrapingBee? Write a review+
FAQ
The questions buyers actually ask.