Looking up ScrapingBee pricing? You’re probably trying to figure out if the $49-$599/month plans are actually affordable, or comparing ScrapingBee against other web scraping APIs.

Here’s the reality: ScrapingBee’s pricing isn’t just the monthly subscription. While plans start at $49/month, the true cost depends on a credit multiplier system that ranges from 1x to 75x per request. A “simple” scraping task can burn through credits 5-25x faster than expected because JavaScript rendering is enabled by default.

This guide breaks down every ScrapingBee pricing tier, reveals the credit multipliers that create budget uncertainty, and explains when it makes sense to consider alternatives.

• ScrapingBee offers four pricing tiers: Freelance ($49/month), Startup ($99/month), Business ($249/month), and Business+ ($599+/month)
• Credit-based pricing creates unpredictability: One API request costs 1-75 credits depending on features used, making actual costs difficult to forecast
• JavaScript rendering enabled by default: Most requests consume 5 credits instead of 1 because JS rendering activates automatically unless explicitly disabled
• Feature-gating forces expensive upgrades: JavaScript rendering and geotargeting are completely unavailable on Freelance ($49) and Startup ($99) plans. You must upgrade to Business ($249) to access them, a 5x price jump
• Hidden multipliers add up fast: Premium proxies (10-25 credits), stealth proxies (75 credits), and AI extraction (+5 credits) can make actual costs 10-75x higher than base pricing suggests
• Budget uncertainty is the top complaint: Users report difficulty understanding credit calculations and predicting monthly costs, with no single documentation table explaining all multipliers
• Alternatives like Firecrawl start at $16/month: Modern APIs eliminate credit confusion with transparent 1-credit-per-page pricing, all features available at all tiers, and no surprise multipliers

ScrapingBee is a web scraping API that handles proxy rotation and headless browser management through REST API calls. The platform serves businesses and developers who need to extract data from websites without managing proxy infrastructure.

The service targets developers building scraping pipelines, data analysts collecting market intelligence, and businesses monitoring competitors. Its main appeal is the managed service approach. You make API calls, and ScrapingBee handles proxy management, browser rendering, and CAPTCHA solving automatically.

Key capabilities:

• Rotating residential and premium proxy pools
• JavaScript rendering with headless browsers
• Automatic CAPTCHA solving
• Geographic targeting across 30+ countries
• Pre-built endpoints for Google Search, Amazon, YouTube, Walmart, ChatGPT
• AI-powered data extraction with natural language prompts
• Screenshots and custom JavaScript scenarios
• Integration with no-code tools like Make and n8n

ScrapingBee uses a credit-based subscription model where each API request consumes 1-75 credits, depending on which features are activated. This multiplier system is the primary source of user confusion and budget overruns.

Here’s what you actually get at each level.

Cost: $49/month

The Freelance plan is ScrapingBee’s entry tier for small-scale projects:

• 250,000 API credits
• 10 concurrent requests
• Rotating proxies included
• IP rotation
• Automatic CAPTCHA solving
• Access to pre-built templates (Google Search, Amazon, YouTube APIs)
• Email support

The real limitation: This tier works only for scraping static HTML websites. The moment you discover your target sites require JavaScript rendering (common for modern e-commerce, social media, or SaaS platforms), you’re forced to upgrade to the $249 Business plan. There’s no middle option.

Credit reality check:

• With JS rendering disabled: 250,000 requests (1 credit each)
• If JavaScript is needed: Cannot use on this tier, must upgrade to Business
• With premium proxies: Not available on this tier

Who is this for? Developers scraping simple HTML pages from 5-10 websites that don’t use JavaScript rendering, running occasional data collection tasks, or prototyping before scaling up.

Cost: $99/month

The Startup plan scales credits and concurrency but maintains feature restrictions:

• 1,000,000 API credits
• 50 concurrent requests
• Rotating proxies included
• IP rotation
• Automatic CAPTCHA solving
• Access to pre-built templates
• API access for data export
• Email support

What actually changes? You get 4x more credits and 5x more concurrent requests compared to Freelance. But you still cannot access JavaScript rendering or geotargeting.

The upgrade trap: Many users buy this plan expecting it to handle their scraping needs, only to discover after purchasing that JavaScript rendering (required for most modern websites) isn’t available. The $50 monthly increase from Freelance to Startup buys credits and concurrency, but not the features that matter most.

Credit calculations at scale:

• Basic scraping (1 credit): 1,000,000 pages
• With JS rendering: Unavailable on this tier
• Premium proxies: Not available on this tier

Who is this for? Teams scraping 10-20 static HTML websites regularly, needing faster processing through higher concurrency, or developers comfortable with CSS/XPath selectors for data extraction.

Cost: $249/month

The Business plan is where ScrapingBee’s core features become available:

• 3,000,000 API credits
• 100 concurrent requests
• JavaScript rendering finally included
• Geotargeting across 30+ countries
• Premium and residential proxies
• Automatic CAPTCHA solving
• AI-powered extraction
• Screenshots and custom JavaScript scenarios
• Direct export to Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3
• Priority email support
• Access to all pre-built APIs

What’s the real upgrade? This isn’t just “more of the same.” It’s access to features that should arguably be available at lower tiers. JavaScript rendering and geotargeting are fundamental web scraping capabilities, not premium add-ons.

The $150 monthly jump from Startup ($99) to Business ($249) feels steep because you’re not just buying scale. You’re buying basic functionality that competitors include at entry-level pricing.

Credit consumption at this tier:

• Basic proxy, no JS: 3,000,000 pages (1 credit each)
• Basic proxy with JS (default): 600,000 pages (5 credits each)
• Premium proxy, no JS: 300,000 pages (10 credits each)
• Premium proxy with JS: 120,000 pages (25 credits each)
• Stealth proxy: 40,000 pages (75 credits each)

The default setting problem: JavaScript rendering is enabled by default. Unless you explicitly disable it for every request, you’re consuming 5 credits instead of 1. Many users discover this after burning through their monthly quota faster than expected.

Who is this for? Data teams scraping JavaScript-heavy websites, businesses requiring geotargeting for localized data collection, or developers building production scrapers that need reliable browser rendering.

Cost: $599/month (minimum, custom pricing above)

The Business+ plan scales beyond standard limits:

• 8,000,000+ API credits (customizable)
• 200+ concurrent requests
• All Business tier features
• Dedicated account manager
• Priority instant chat support
• Team collaboration features
• Custom SLA agreements

What actually changes? You’re paying for dedicated infrastructure, account management, and the ability to negotiate custom credit packages. The features remain the same as Business. You’re buying scale and service level guarantees.

When to consider this tier: You’re processing millions of pages monthly, scraping is mission-critical to your business operations, or you need guaranteed uptime with contractual SLAs.

Who is this for? Enterprise data vendors, large e-commerce businesses monitoring thousands of competitor products, or development teams where web scraping is a core business function requiring dedicated support.

ScrapingBee’s credit-based model charges per API request, but the cost per request varies dramatically based on which features activate.

The multiplier system:

The default trap: JavaScript rendering is enabled by default unless you explicitly set parameters to disable it. This means users can consume 5 credits per request without realizing it.

Example scenario:

You subscribe to the Startup plan ($99/month, 1,000,000 credits) expecting to scrape 1 million pages. But if JavaScript rendering is on, you’re actually getting 200,000 pages (5 credits each). Your effective cost isn’t $0.099 per 1,000 pages. It’s $0.495 per 1,000 pages, a 5x increase.

What you’re paying for:

• Credits: Your monthly quota of API requests
• Concurrency: How many simultaneous requests you can run
• Feature access: Which capabilities are available (JS rendering, geotargeting)
• Support level: Response time and account management

What’s NOT unlimited:

• Credits reset monthly (unused credits don’t roll over)
• Concurrent request limits are hard caps
• Premium proxies consume 10-25x more credits than basic proxies

This model makes ScrapingBee’s pricing more complex to predict than usage-based alternatives. You pay a flat subscription fee, but your actual scraping capacity varies by 1-75x depending on configuration.

The pricing concerns go beyond the sticker price. The credit multiplier system creates widespread confusion and budget unpredictability that users consistently cite as ScrapingBee’s biggest weakness.

The documentation problem

Ivan R., an E-learning professional on Software Advice explains:

Honestly the credits system is a little bit hard to understand and there’s no one concrete place (table) with all credits and/or calculations, I believe that would be very helpful to have,

ScrapingBee’s documentation scatters credit information across multiple pages. Users need to piece together base proxy costs, JavaScript rendering multipliers, premium vs stealth proxy costs, AI extraction additions, and geographic targeting impacts. There’s no single reference showing how features combine and multiply costs.

Unpredictable cost calculations

Another reviewer, David G., reinforces the budgeting challenge:

The pricing is less predictable since the price per request depends on which features are being used or not.

When you enable multiple features, costs multiply in ways that aren’t immediately obvious. Start with premium proxy (10 credits), add JavaScript rendering (multiplies to 25 credits), and the result is 25 credits per request instead of the baseline 1 credit. For teams trying to budget monthly scraping costs, this variability makes forecasting nearly impossible.

Default settings consume 5x more credits

JavaScript rendering activates by default. For developers unfamiliar with ScrapingBee’s API, this means:

1. Subscribe to a plan based on advertised credit amounts
2. Make requests assuming 1 credit per page
3. Discover credits depleted 5x faster than expected
4. Learn (often too late) that JS rendering should have been disabled for static sites

This isn’t a minor configuration detail. It’s the difference between your $99 Startup plan handling 1 million pages or just 200,000 pages.

Feature-gating forces unexpected upgrades

JavaScript rendering and geotargeting are locked behind the $249 Business tier. These aren’t advanced features. They’re fundamental capabilities for scraping modern websites.

Many users subscribe to Freelance ($49) or Startup ($99) expecting to test their scraping needs, only to discover mid-project that their target sites require JavaScript rendering. The forced upgrade to Business represents a 2.5x to 5x price increase just to access basic functionality.

Performance issues compound the problem

Daniyar A. experienced issues on Software Advice:

There were also occasional issues with scraping particularly complex websites.

Marcus S., an AI Engineer, reports on Capterra:

Sometimes (it) can be quite slow on very hard-to-scrape websites.

When scraping is slow or unreliable, you consume more credits through retries and extended processing times. ScrapingBee’s average response time of 11.9 seconds per request (based on testing) means slower data collection. This turns pricing unpredictability into a compounding problem where both credit consumption and processing time create budget uncertainty.

Not optimized for AI applications

ScrapingBee returns HTML and JSON that require extensive post-processing for AI workflows. While the platform offers an AI extraction feature with natural language prompts, it doesn’t provide native markdown conversion.

For teams building with LangChain, LlamaIndex, or custom LLMs, this means adding parsing layers and dealing with higher token consumption. Research shows that markdown output reduces token consumption for AI models by an average of 67% compared to raw HTML. Without this optimization, developers face higher LLM API costs on top of unpredictable scraping expenses.

Choose Freelance if: You’re scraping 5-10 simple HTML websites with no JavaScript requirements, running occasional data collection, and comfortable with 10 concurrent requests. This is only viable if your targets are static HTML pages.

Choose Startup if: You’re scraping 10-20 static HTML websites regularly and need 50 concurrent requests for faster processing. Be aware this plan still lacks JavaScript rendering and geotargeting, which most modern websites require.

Choose Business if: You need JavaScript rendering (most modern websites), require geotargeting for location-specific data, or discovered your targets don’t work on lower tiers. This is the minimum viable plan for serious web scraping operations.

Choose Business+ if: Web scraping is mission-critical to your business, you’re processing millions of pages monthly, or you need dedicated account management and custom SLAs.

While ScrapingBee works for basic HTML scraping with managed proxies, certain use cases demand different solutions:

• Building AI applications: If you need LLM-ready data in markdown or structured JSON without post-processing, ScrapingBee’s HTML/JSON exports require extensive cleanup
• Budget predictability: If unpredictable credit multipliers make it impossible to forecast monthly costs accurately
• Feature accessibility: If paying $249 just to unlock JavaScript rendering feels like artificial feature-gating
• Testing without commitment: If you want to thoroughly evaluate all features (including JS rendering and geotargeting) before subscribing
• Transparent pricing: If you prefer straightforward per-page pricing over credit multipliers that range from 1x to 75x
• Performance at scale: If 11.9-second average response times create bottlenecks in high-volume scraping operations

If any of these resonate with your situation, exploring alternatives built with different pricing philosophies makes sense.

Firecrawl’s pricing takes a fundamentally different approach than ScrapingBee. While ScrapingBee uses credit multipliers and feature-gating, Firecrawl offers transparent 1-credit-per-page pricing with all features available at all tiers.

Key differences:

• Pricing model: Firecrawl charges 1 credit per page regardless of JavaScript rendering, geotargeting, or other features. ScrapingBee charges 1-75 credits depending on configuration
• Feature access: Firecrawl includes JavaScript rendering, geotargeting, and all capabilities on every plan. ScrapingBee locks JS rendering and geotargeting behind the $249 Business tier
• Output format: Firecrawl delivers LLM-ready markdown natively, reducing token consumption by 67%. ScrapingBee returns HTML and JSON requiring post-processing
• Default settings: Firecrawl’s 1-credit model means no surprise multipliers. ScrapingBee’s JS-rendering-by-default consumes 5x credits unless you disable it
• Starting price: Firecrawl starts at $16/month. ScrapingBee starts at $49/month (but realistically $249 for full features)

Budget predictability

The core advantage is cost forecasting. With Firecrawl:

• 10,000 pages = 10,000 credits, always
• $16/month = known capacity, no hidden multipliers
• All features included, no upgrade surprises

With ScrapingBee:

• 10,000 pages = 10,000 to 750,000 credits depending on settings
• $49 advertised, $249 required for JavaScript rendering
• Credit burn rate varies 1x to 75x per request

Performance comparison

Firecrawl delivers sub-second response times for cached content and 2-5 seconds for fresh scrapes with JavaScript rendering included. ScrapingBee averages 11.9 seconds per request based on testing.

For teams scraping thousands of pages, that performance difference translates to hours of processing time.

No-code friendly despite being API-first

Firecrawl integrates with no-code platforms like Zapier, Make, n8n, and Bubble.io, similar to ScrapingBee’s Make and n8n integrations. Both support developers and non-developers, but Firecrawl adds native AI framework support through LangChain and LlamaIndex connectors.

When to choose Firecrawl over ScrapingBee

Choose Firecrawl if you:

• Need transparent pricing without credit multipliers
• Want all features (JS rendering, geotargeting) available at entry-level pricing
• Build AI applications requiring markdown output
• Prefer predictable costs over feature-gated tiers
• Need sub-5-second response times
• Want to test all capabilities before subscribing (Playground access)

For detailed comparisons, see the complete ScrapingBee alternatives analysis.

How much does ScrapingBee cost per month?

ScrapingBee pricing starts at $49/month (Freelance plan) with 250,000 credits, but JavaScript rendering and geotargeting require the Business plan at $249/month. Startup costs $99/month, and Business+ starts at $599/month with custom enterprise pricing available.

Does ScrapingBee have a free plan?

No, ScrapingBee does not have a free plan. Alternatives like Firecrawl offer a generous free plan with 500 monthly credits.

What are ScrapingBee’s hidden costs?

The credit multiplier system creates hidden costs. JavaScript rendering (enabled by default) consumes 5x more credits, premium proxies cost 10-25x base rate, stealth proxies cost 75x, and AI extraction adds 5 credits per query. A request you expect to cost 1 credit might actually cost 25-75 credits.

How does ScrapingBee’s credit system work?

Each API request consumes 1-75 credits based on features used: basic proxy (1 credit), JS rendering (5 credits), premium proxy (10 credits), premium proxy with JS (25 credits), stealth proxy (75 credits). Users report this system is confusing because there’s no single table documenting all combinations.

Can I use JavaScript rendering on the Freelance or Startup plans?

No. JavaScript rendering and geotargeting are unavailable on Freelance ($49) and Startup ($99) plans. You must upgrade to Business ($249) to access these features, which most modern websites require for successful scraping.

Does ScrapingBee charge per page scraped?

ScrapingBee uses a credit-based model where you pay for API credits (not pages directly). One page might cost 1-75 credits depending on which features activate. This makes cost-per-page calculations unpredictable compared to flat-rate alternatives.

Is the $49 Freelance plan enough for web scraping?

The $49 Freelance plan only works for scraping static HTML websites without JavaScript. Since most modern sites require JavaScript rendering (unavailable on this tier), you’ll likely need the $249 Business plan for real-world scraping operations.

Why do users complain about ScrapingBee pricing?

Users cite unpredictable credit consumption, lack of clear documentation on credit calculations, feature-gating that forces expensive upgrades, and JavaScript rendering being enabled by default (consuming 5x more credits than expected). The pricing model makes budgeting difficult.