Web scraping technique is used in various industries for different purpose like data mining, competitive analysis, price tracking, etc. Web scraping APIs can be really handy for building an efficient web scraper tool for various use cases. In this article, I will be reviewing one such web scraping API that comes with great features and can be really helpful for developers in their web scraping projects. We will be exploring about ScrapingBee web scraping API features, pricing models, and pros and cons in detail.
ScrapingBee was founded in the year 2019 by Kevin Sahin and Pierre de Wulf. Their first two products were ShopToList and PricingBot, which were price monitoring tools. While working on these tools they gained a lot of experience in web scrapping which led to building ScrapingBee. As this web scrapping API comes with great features so it gained a lot of popularity in a very short time. It is used by big companies such as SAP, Zapier, Deloitte, Zillow, etc.
ScrapingBee Features
ScrapingBee API is capable of handling headless browsers. Getting blocked while scrapping the web is a common issue that we face. ScrapingBee solves this problem by using rotating proxies. It provides various other awesome features that are explained below.
- General Web Scraping: It can do common web scraping tasks like retrieving data from the internet, monitoring prices, and extracting reviews, all without facing blocking issues.
- Headless Browsers Handling: You can render web pages like a real browser. This is done with the help of thousands of headless instances using the recent Chrome version.
- JavaScript Rendering: This feature allows you to render javascript for scraping any website. Even applications with a single page can be scraped using various libraries like AngularJS, React, etc.
- Rotate Proxies: They have a large proxy pool that hides your bots which reduces the chance of getting blocked.
- No Code Scarping: Even if you have no coding experience you can use the Make integration feature to build custom web scraping engines.
- Screenshots API: This feature allows you to take screenshots of any website with a single API call.
- Languages: It supports various programming technologies including Python, JavaScript, Java, Ruby, PHP, and Go.
ScrapingBee Pricing
ScrapingBee provides various pricing options that are mentioned below. If you are not sure which plan to use or want to try the service then you can use their free plan that provides 1000 API calls. You are not required to give your credit card details for using free credits.
| Free | Freelance | Startup | Business | Business+ | |
| Price | Free | $49/month | $99/month | $249/month | $599+/month |
| Credits | 1000 | 150k | 1 Million | 3 Million | 8+ Million |
| Concurrent Requests | – | 5 | 50 | 100 | 200+ |
Pros & Cons
Good Things:
There are various good things about ScrapingBee that are given below.
- Low API response time as compared to other services in the market.
- Comes with detailed documentation that is really helpful for beginners.
- Provides free API calls for testing the service without giving credit card details.
- Supports mindblowing features such as headless browser handling, javascript rendering, rotating proxies, etc.
Bad Things:
ScrapningBee does not have any big issues but still, there are some minor cons that I collected from users reviews on various platforms.
- Some of you may find the pricing to be on the higher side.
- Some people complained about not being able to scrape some websites.
- Even though it provides proxy rotations but still sometimes your scarping bots can be blocked.
Final Words
ScrapingBee API works great for general web scraping, data extraction, and javascript rendering. It is capable of handling headless browsers with the proxy rotation that prevents rate limiting and the chance of getting blocked. With lots of amazing features, this API helps programmers and businesses ability of easy web scraping. ScrapingBee offers flexible pricing plans along with some free API credits to try their service.
In conclusion, I can say it’s one of the best web scraping APIs currently available in the market. Do share in the comment section if you have any queries regarding this API.
