Pricing breakdown
| Plan | ScrapingBee | ScraperAPI | SnapRender |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 1,000 credits | 1,000 credits | 100 requests/mo |
| Entry plan | $49/mo | $49/mo | $9/mo |
| Entry credits | 150,000 | 100,000 | 5,000 requests |
| JS rendering cost | 5 credits/req | 10 credits/req | Included (1 req = 1 req) |
| Effective JS requests | 30,000 | 10,000 | 5,000 |
| Cost per JS request | $0.0016 | $0.0049 | $0.0018 |
| Premium proxies | 10-75 credits/req | 10-25 credits/req | Included |
The credit multiplier trap
Both ScrapingBee and ScraperAPI advertise large credit numbers, but JavaScript rendering, premium proxies, and geo-targeting multiply the cost per request. A single "premium JS" request on ScraperAPI costs 25 credits — turning 100,000 credits into just 4,000 actual requests.
Feature comparison
| Feature | ScrapingBee | ScraperAPI | SnapRender |
|---|---|---|---|
| JavaScript rendering | |||
| Screenshot API | |||
| PDF generation | |||
| Markdown extraction | |||
| CSS selector extraction | |||
| Anti-bot bypass | |||
| Residential proxies | |||
| Geo-targeting | |||
| Google Search API | |||
| Webhook callbacks |
When to use each
ScrapingBee
Best for: High-volume static HTML scraping where you need geo-targeting and residential proxies. Their Google Search API is solid for SERP scraping.
ScraperAPI
Best for: Enterprise teams that need webhook callbacks, structured data endpoints, and a large proxy pool. Good for Amazon and e-commerce scraping.
SnapRender
Best for: JavaScript-rendered pages, screenshots, PDFs, and structured data extraction. Transparent pricing with no credit multipliers. Ideal when you need rendering + extraction in one call.
Simple pricing. No credit math.
SnapRender charges per request — no credit multipliers for JavaScript rendering, no surprise costs for premium proxies. Every request includes full JS execution.
Get Your API Key — FreeFrequently asked questions
It depends on your usage pattern. ScraperAPI starts at $49/month for 100,000 credits. ScrapingBee starts at $49/month for 150,000 credits. However, JavaScript rendering costs 5-10x more credits on both platforms. SnapRender starts at $9/month with 5,000 requests (all including JS rendering) — making it significantly cheaper for JS-heavy use cases.
Yes, ScrapingBee can execute JavaScript by setting render_js=true. However, this costs 5 credits per request instead of 1 credit. At their base plan, that means only 30,000 JS-rendered requests instead of 150,000 static requests.
ScraperAPI handles some anti-bot protections automatically by routing through residential proxies and rotating headers. However, aggressive protections like Cloudflare Turnstile or DataDome may still block requests. You may need their premium proxy pool for these sites.
ScrapingBee has a screenshot API endpoint. ScraperAPI does not natively support screenshots or PDFs. SnapRender supports screenshots (PNG/JPEG), PDFs, rendered HTML, markdown extraction, and structured data extraction — all from a single API.
All three (ScrapingBee, ScraperAPI, SnapRender) have simple REST APIs. SnapRender has the simplest pricing model (flat per-request, no credit multipliers) and includes JavaScript rendering in every request at no extra cost.