Apify vs ScrapingBee
Apify and ScrapingBee are both in the Scraping API category. Apify fits best for: Teams that want a ready-made scraper for a popular site (Google Maps, Amazon, social media) or a platform to host their own. ScrapingBee fits best for: Developers who want a predictable, easy scraping API that handles rendering and proxies without managing infrastructure.
| Apify | ScrapingBee | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Scraping API | Scraping API |
| Starting price | $19/mo | $19/mo |
| Free tier | $5 of platform usage per month, no credit card, 5 concurrent runs | 1,000 free API credits trial, no credit card |
| Pricing model | usage (compute units) plus per-Actor pay-per-event/pay-per-result pricing | credits per successful request |
| AI extraction | ||
| Structured JSON | ||
| JS rendering | ||
| Proxies / anti-bot | ||
| API | ||
| No-code UI | ||
| Open source | ||
| MCP server | ||
| Best for | Teams that want a ready-made scraper for a popular site (Google Maps, Amazon, social media) or a platform to host their own. | Developers who want a predictable, easy scraping API that handles rendering and proxies without managing infrastructure. |
| Visit Apify | Visit ScrapingBee |
Why choose Apify
- Apify Store with thousands of prebuilt scrapers (Actors)
- Build and deploy your own Actors (Crawlee, JS/Python)
- Built-in proxy, scheduling, storage and webhooks
- Official MCP server exposing Actors to AI agents
Watch out for
- Costs can be hard to predict across compute units and per-Actor fees
- Quality of community Actors varies
- Free plan's proxy usable only inside the platform
Why choose ScrapingBee
- Headless Chrome rendering with JS scenarios
- Rotating and premium/stealth proxies
- AI extraction via natural-language ai_query
- CSS/XPath extract rules to JSON
Watch out for
- JS rendering is on by default and costs 5x a plain request
- Premium/stealth proxies multiply credit costs quickly
- Hobby plan has low credits once JS + premium proxy are used
Our product
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