ScraperAPI is a proxy + rendering API for web scraping: send it a URL and it rotates proxies, solves CAPTCHAs and (optionally) renders JavaScript, returning the raw HTML. You're billed in API credits, where harder requests cost more credits. Here's the pricing, the free trial, and how to start.
| Plan | Price | API credits / mo |
|---|---|---|
| Free trial free | $0 | ~5,000 credits (~7 days) |
| Hobby | from ~$49/mo | ~100,000 credits |
| Startup | from ~$149/mo | ~1,000,000 credits |
| Business / Enterprise | from ~$299/mo | 3M+ credits, more concurrency |
ScraperAPI gives a free trial of around 5,000 credits for about a week, and some plans keep a small ongoing free allowance. That's plenty to validate selectors and measure how many credits your target pages actually burn (the JS-rendering multiplier is the thing that surprises people). For tiny recurring jobs, a single cheap proxy plus your own fetch loop can undercut a paid plan.
1. Sign up at scraperapi.com and confirm your email.
2. Your API key is shown on the dashboard.
3. Pass it as the api_key query parameter on each request.
4. Add render=true only when you truly need JavaScript (it costs more credits).
Scrape one page:
ScraperAPI competes with Bright Data (bigger residential network, pricier), and with LLM-focused tools like Firecrawl that return clean markdown instead of raw HTML. If you only need search results rather than arbitrary pages, SerpAPI or Brave Search are simpler and often cheaper. Choose ScraperAPI when you need anti-bot proxy muscle on arbitrary sites but want to parse the HTML yourself. Feeding a RAG pipeline? Pair scraping with Pinecone and an LLM like OpenAI.
Yes — a free trial of roughly 5,000 API credits for about a week, with a small ongoing allowance on some plans. After that you pick a monthly credit plan.
Sign up at scraperapi.com, confirm your email, and the key appears on your dashboard. Send it as the api_key query parameter on every request.
A basic request is 1 credit. JavaScript rendering, premium/residential proxies and geotargeting cost more (often 10–25 credits each), so estimate using your real mix of request types, not the headline credit count.
ScraperAPI returns raw HTML and is built for general scraping with proxies. Firecrawl returns clean markdown built for LLMs and RAG. Use ScraperAPI when you'll parse HTML yourself; use Firecrawl when you want LLM-ready text without writing a cleaner.
Not affiliated with ScraperAPI. Prices are reference estimates — always verify on the official pricing page.