ScraperAPI vs ScrapingAnt (2026): which should you pick?
As of Oct 24, 2026, ScrapingAnt grades higher than ScraperAPI: 2.6 against 2.2 out of 4.0.
Checked Oct 23, 2026 · graded Oct 23, 2026 and Oct 24, 2026 by ToolGPA
ScrapingAnt grades higher on value for money and the free plan. They get the same grade on features, ease of use and platforms.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
ScraperAPI
Web scraping API with Google search endpoints, priced in API credits
ScrapingAnt
Web scraping API with headless Chrome, proxies and AI extraction
Which one is for you
Pick ScraperAPI if
- Fits if you scrape Google alongside Amazon, Walmart or eBay on one key
- Works for large batches that need retries and scheduling, through the async API or DataPipeline
Look elsewhere if
- Watch out: a Google or Bing request costs 25 credits, so Hobby's 100,000 credits is about 4,000 searches
- Skip it if you need rankings outside the US and EU below Business at $269.10 a month
- Pricey if you need rendering, premium proxies or screenshots, which add 10 credits each
- Tight if you run out mid-month, as credits don't roll over and pay-as-you-go starts at Scaling, $427.50
- Tight if you're on Free, with 1,000 credits a month, about 40 Google searches
Pick ScrapingAnt if
- Fits if you need the search results page and the pages it links to on one key
- Works for jobs that send many requests at once, since no plan caps concurrency
Look elsewhere if
- Watch out: search pages come back as HTML, and JSON through the AI extractor costs 1 more credit per 30 characters read and written
- Watch out: other pages cost 1 to 125 credits, with residential proxies and rendering the dearest
- Tight if your usage swings, since unused credits don't carry over to the next month
- Pricey if you need standalone proxies, which are billed by GB on top of API credits
How we grade them
| 2.2GPAScraperAPIFair | 2.6GPAScrapingAntGood | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | CHobby is $44.10 a month on yearly billing ($49 monthly), at the dear end of this category's usual range. A Google or Bing request is 25 credits, so 100,000 credits is about 4,000 searches, around $11 per 1,000. | BEnthusiast is $19 a month for 100,000 credits, on the line of this category's cheaper quarter. A Google request is 10 credits, so that's 10,000 result pages, $1.90 per 1,000, before any AI extraction. |
| Free plan and trial | CA 7-day trial of 5,000 credits with no card, then a free plan of 1,000 credits a month. At 25 credits a search, that's 40 Google searches. | BA free plan for good: 10,000 credits every month with no card, about 1,000 Google result pages, and failed requests aren't charged. A side project could run on that. |
| Features | CGoogle Search, Shopping, Maps, News and Jobs endpoints, Bing, rendering, async jobs and a no-code DataPipeline. The gap is in the listing: Hobby and Startup geotarget only the US and EU, and country targeting starts at Business, $269.10. | CHeadless Chrome, rotating proxies in 100+ countries, Markdown output and plain-English AI extraction, with Google, Bing, Yandex and DuckDuckGo pages on one key. The gap is in the listing: search pages come back as HTML, and JSON needs the AI extractor at extra credits. |
| Ease of use | CJudged on how fast a developer gets a first result: SDKs, a CLI and ready Google endpoints that need no rendering turned on. No rating on record, and credit costs stack up by site and option. | CJudged on how fast a developer gets a first result: one endpoint, no concurrency cap and an MCP server. No rating on record, and requests range from 1 to 125 credits by browser and proxy choice. |
| Platforms and integrations | BWeb, with an API, SDKs, a CLI and an MCP server, plus LangChain, LlamaIndex, n8n and Zapier. No desktop or phone app, so B is the top. | BWeb, with an API and an MCP server for Claude Code, Cursor and Windsurf, plus n8n, Make and GitHub Actions. No desktop or phone app, so B is the top. |
| Best for | Google results alongside shop and site scraping | search pages and the pages they link to |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: ScraperAPI and ScrapingAnt. How we grade
Price against what you get
ScraperAPI starts at $44.10 a month and scores 2.3 out of 4 on features, ease of use and platforms. ScrapingAnt starts at $19 a month and scores 2.3.
They score the same, and ScrapingAnt starts $25.10 a month lower. Of the other SERP and SEO data APIs on the chart, 8 score higher than ScraperAPI for less, and 1 scores higher than ScrapingAnt for less.
Features, ease of use and platforms, averaged
What paid plans start at, a month (each step along is roughly double) →
- The best score at each price
- Has a free plan
- No free plan
Where they differ
At a glance
| ScraperAPI | ScrapingAnt | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free plan | Free plan |
| Starts at | $44.10 per month for 100K API credits, billed annually ($49 billed monthly) | $19 per month for 100,000 API credits |
| Free plan | Free plan after the trial: 1,000 API credits a month and 5 concurrent threads, no credit card needed. A Google or Bing request costs 25 credits. | 10,000 API credits every month, with failed requests not charged. No card needed. |
| Free trial | 7-day free trial with 5,000 API credits, no credit card required | None listed |
| Web | ||
| Made by | ScraperAPI | DATAANT SP. Z O.O. |
| Price read from | scraperapi.com | scrapingant.com |
| Checked | Oct 23, 2026 | Oct 23, 2026 |
Worth knowing
ScraperAPI
- A Google or Bing request costs 25 credits, so Hobby's 100,000 credits cover about 4,000 Google searches.
- JavaScript rendering, premium proxies and screenshots each add 10 credits, and bypassing bot protection adds 10 more.
- Credits reset each billing cycle with no rollover; pay-as-you-go past the allowance starts at the Scaling plan.
- Hobby and Startup can only geotarget the US and EU; country-level targeting starts at Business.
ScrapingAnt
- Google requests cost 10 credits each; other pages cost 1 to 125 credits by browser and proxy choice, with residential proxies and JavaScript rendering the most.
- Search pages come back as HTML by default; JSON needs the AI extractor, which adds 1 credit per 30 characters read and written.
- Unused credits do not carry over; a plan that runs out mid-month can be restarted at once by paying again.
- Standalone residential and datacenter proxies are billed by GB, separately from API credits.
Key features
ScraperAPI
- Google structured data endpoints
- Ready-made endpoints return Google Search, Shopping, Maps, News and Jobs results as JSON, without needing JavaScript rendering turned on.
- Proxy rotation and anti-bot handling
- Rotating proxy pools, premium residential and mobile IPs, CAPTCHA handling and automatic retries, with geotargeting by country on Business and up.
- JavaScript rendering and screenshots
- Load dynamic pages in a headless browser, follow a rendering instruction set, and capture screenshots of the result.
- Asynchronous API and DataPipeline
- Submit up to 50,000 jobs that retry until they succeed, or schedule large scraping jobs in DataPipeline without writing code.
- AI Parser and LLM-ready output
- Train a custom parser to get clean JSON from any source, or ask for pages as text or Markdown for language model pipelines.
- MCP server and integrations
- An MCP server, a CLI and SDKs, with LangChain, LlamaIndex, n8n and Zapier integrations.
ScrapingAnt
- Headless Chrome rendering
- Each request runs in a fresh Chrome instance, with custom JavaScript snippets, waits for a CSS selector, and custom cookies and headers.
- Rotating proxies
- Datacenter and residential proxies across 100+ countries rotate per request, with geo-targeting by country code and CAPTCHA and Cloudflare handling.
- Search result pages
- Send a Google, Bing, Yandex or DuckDuckGo results address to the same endpoint to get the page back, then scrape the result pages on the same key.
- Markdown and AI extraction
- Get any page as LLM-ready Markdown, or describe fields in plain English and receive JSON, billed by the characters read and written.
- No concurrency cap
- Every plan can send requests in parallel without queues or throttling; ScrapingAnt allocates browsers and proxies per request.
- MCP server
- Adds tools for page HTML, Markdown and text to Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf and other MCP clients, drawing on the plan's credits.
Plans
ScraperAPI
Free$0
1,000 API credits a month and 5 concurrent threads, to keep scraping after the trial ends.
Hobby$44.10
per month for 100K API credits, billed annually ($49 billed monthly)
20 concurrent threads, geotargeting in the US and EU only, and 30 days of analytics history.
Startup$134.10
per month for 1M API credits, billed annually ($149 billed monthly)
50 concurrent threads, with US and EU geotargeting only.
Business$269.10
per month for 3M API credits, billed annually ($299 billed monthly)
100 concurrent threads, country-level geotargeting worldwide and unlimited analytics history.
Scaling$427.50
per month for 5M API credits, billed annually ($475 billed monthly)
200 concurrent threads, and the first plan with pay-as-you-go credits past the monthly allowance.
Professional$877.50
per month for 10.5M API credits, billed annually ($975 billed monthly)
300 threads and priority support. Advanced is $1,777.50 a month billed annually for 21.5M credits; Enterprise is custom above 22M.
ScrapingAnt
Free$0
10,000 API credits a month, enough for about 1,000 Google result pages at 10 credits each.
Enthusiast$19
per month for 100,000 API credits
Email support and documentation for integration help.
Startup$49
per month for 500,000 API credits
Priority email support and custom code snippets.
Business$249
per month for 3,000,000 API credits
Priority email support, debug sessions and expert assistance.
Business Pro$599
per month for 8,000,000 API credits
Priority debug sessions, custom proxy pools and custom anti-bot handling.
Custom$699
per month and up for 10M+ API credits
Priority and dedicated support, full onboarding and a dedicated account manager. Through sales.
Ways to pay less
ScraperAPI
- Annual discount
10% off with yearly billing
ScraperAPI's pricing page lists 10% off every self-serve plan when billed yearly: Hobby is $44.10 a month instead of $49.
ScrapingAnt
No public discounts listed.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, ScraperAPI or ScrapingAnt?
As of Oct 23, 2026, ScrapingAnt is cheaper to start with: $19 a month, against $44.10 a month for ScraperAPI. ScraperAPI starts at $44.10 per month for 100K API credits, billed annually ($49 billed monthly), and ScrapingAnt starts at $19 per month for 100,000 API credits.
Which has a free plan, ScraperAPI or ScrapingAnt?
As of Oct 23, 2026, both ScraperAPI and ScrapingAnt have a free plan.
More comparisons
How this page was made
- The verdict at the top follows a fixed rule. When both tools are in the same category and either is in our top three for it, the verdict follows that ranking: the higher-placed tool is our pick. The top three weigh who each tool suits as well as its grades, so a pick can go against the GPA. Otherwise the page does not pick one and says which grades higher: the higher GPA first; on a tie, the one with a free plan, then the one that starts cheaper in dollars a month, counted the same way for both; if they are still level, what the choice depends on.
- The grades are our own, from each tool’s review or report card. The GPA is their average.
- Prices, plans and platforms come from each tool’s listing. The table above says where each price was read and when.
- The differences and the answers to the questions are worked out from those listings.