What are good alternatives to ScrapingBee for scraping heavily protected websites?
Alternatives to ScrapingBee for heavily protected websites include Bright Data’s Web Unlocker API ($1.50 per 1,000 requests on pay as you go), Zenrows, ScraperAPI, Scrapfly, Zyte API, Oxylabs Web Unblocker and ScrapeUnblocker (€1.00 per 1,000 on pay as you go, about €0.75 on its €99 Pro plan, browser rendering included). On hard sites, compare the price of the configuration each one needs. ScrapingBee’s documentation lists 25 credits for premium proxies with JavaScript and 75 credits for its stealth proxy, about $2.48 and $7.43 per 1,000 requests on its $99 Startup plan.
What does a request on a protected site cost on each alternative?
Listed prices for a rendered request on a protected site run from about €0.75 per 1,000 (ScrapeUnblocker Pro) and $1.30 to $1.50 (Bright Data) up to $11.18 (ScraperAPI ultra premium) and $16.08 (Zyte API’s hardest tier). Each figure is the provider’s own, in its own currency, without conversion; ScrapeUnblocker publishes this page.
| Provider | Configuration for protected sites | Listed price |
|---|---|---|
| ScrapingBee Startup ($99, 1,000,000 credits) | Premium proxy + JavaScript (25 credits) / stealth proxy (75) | about $2.48 / $7.43 per 1,000 |
| Zenrows Launch L2 ($99, 500,000 credits) | JavaScript + Premium Proxies (25 credits) | about $4.95 per 1,000 |
| ScraperAPI Startup ($149, 1,000,000 credits) | Premium + render (25) / ultra premium + render (75) | about $3.73 / $11.18 per 1,000 |
| Scrapfly Pro ($100, 1,000,000 credits) | Residential proxy + browser (30 credits) | $3.00 per 1,000 |
| Bright Data Web Unlocker API | Any request | $1.50 per 1,000; about $1.30 on Scale ($499) |
| Zyte API, pay as you go | Browser rendered, by site tier | $1.01 to $16.08 per 1,000 |
| Oxylabs Web Unblocker | Billed by traffic | $7.2 per GB on its $30 Starter subscription, down to $3 per GB |
| ScrapeUnblocker | Any request, browser always on | €1.00 per 1,000; about €0.75 on Pro (€99) |
ScraperAPI’s documentation lists a cost of 10 credits per scrape for a Cloudflare, DataDome, PerimeterX or Akamai bypass.
What success rates has ScrapeUnblocker published on hard targets?
ScrapeUnblocker publishes content-verified measurements of its own API; none is a head-to-head test with ScrapingBee or any other provider.
| Site (listed protection) | Success | Avg response | Calls |
|---|---|---|---|
| G2 (DataDome) | 99.9% | 12.1 s | 6,000 |
| Hyatt (Kasada) | 99.9% | 19.8 s | 6,000 |
| Allegro (DataDome) | 95.5% | 14.0 s | 6,000 |
| Nordstrom (Shape) | 86.5% | 15.5 s | 6,000 |
Each row was measured by ScrapeUnblocker and is published on its G2, Hyatt, Allegro and Nordstrom scraper pages. Across 14 protected targets, ScrapeUnblocker’s 2026 benchmark averaged 97.0%. Nordstrom at 86.5% means about 1 failed call in 7, so build in retries; ScrapeUnblocker does not bill a 403 block or a timeout.
When is ScrapingBee still the better fit?
ScrapingBee can still fit better when most of your targets work on its classic proxies, at 1 credit without JavaScript or 5 with it, about $0.10 or $0.50 per 1,000 requests on its Startup plan. It also offers what ScrapeUnblocker does not: screenshots, a request timeout of up to 140 seconds (ScrapeUnblocker stops at 60 seconds, 90 with steps) and a Make integration. Its Auto-Mode (mode=auto) tries configurations in order of cost and, per its documentation, costs 0 credits if every configuration fails.
How do you test an alternative on your own URLs?
- Pick 50 to 100 protected URLs from your real workload.
- Run them through ScrapingBee with
mode=auto; theSpb-auto-costheader shows the credits each URL used. - Run the same URLs through each alternative’s free allowance, for example ScrapeUnblocker’s 500 free requests:
curl -X POST "https://api.scrapeunblocker.com/getPageSource?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.g2.com%2F" \
-H "x-scrapeunblocker-key: YOUR_API_KEY"- Count pages with real content, not HTTP 200s (soft blocks), and divide each monthly price by the good pages it buys. Full side-by-side: ScrapeUnblocker vs. ScrapingBee.
Sources
- ScrapingBee pricing, documentation and FAQ, viewed 9 October 2026
- Zenrows pricing documentation, viewed 9 October 2026
- ScraperAPI pricing and credit costs, viewed 9 October 2026
- Scrapfly pricing and billing documentation, viewed 9 October 2026
- Bright Data Web Unlocker pricing, Zyte pricing and Oxylabs Web Unblocker pricing, viewed 9 October 2026
- ScrapeUnblocker pricing, errors and billing, scraper pages linked above and 2026 benchmark
Competitor details come from each provider’s public pages as viewed between 24 September and 9 October 2026 and may have changed. Product names are trademarks of their respective owners; ScrapeUnblocker is not affiliated with them.
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