scrapingbee vs apify
ScrapingBee vs Apify — features, pricing, and which to choose for your SEO workflow in 2026.
Quick Verdict
ScrapingBee and Apify both target the web scraping market, but they take fundamentally different approaches. ScrapingBee positions itself as a straightforward web scraping API focused on reliability and ease of use, while Apify offers a comprehensive automation platform with an extensive marketplace of pre-built scrapers.
The choice typically comes down to whether you need a simple, reliable API for basic scraping tasks or a full-featured platform with advanced automation capabilities and ready-made solutions for complex scraping scenarios.
Feature Comparison
ScrapingBee excels at providing a clean, developer-friendly API for web scraping with excellent headless browser rendering. Their service handles JavaScript-heavy sites well and includes built-in proxy rotation, CAPTCHA solving, and session management. The API is straightforward — you send a URL, get back the rendered HTML or structured data. Apify takes a platform approach with its Actor system — pre-built scrapers for specific use cases like Google SERP extraction, Instagram data collection, and e-commerce monitoring. Beyond individual scrapers, Apify offers workflow automation, data processing pipelines, and cloud scheduling. Their marketplace contains hundreds of ready-to-use scrapers that you can deploy without writing code. Apify also provides more advanced features like dataset management, webhook integrations, and comprehensive monitoring dashboards.
Pricing Comparison
Both platforms start at $49/month, but the value proposition differs significantly. ScrapingBee's pricing is based on API credits, with their Startup plan offering 150,000 API credits monthly. Their pricing scales linearly with usage, making costs predictable for high-volume scraping. Apify uses a compute unit (CU) model where different scrapers consume varying amounts of resources. Their $49 plan includes 41 compute unit hours monthly. While this can be more cost-effective for simple scrapers, resource-intensive actors can burn through credits quickly. Apify's pricing becomes more favorable at enterprise scale, especially when using multiple pre-built scrapers that would otherwise require custom development.
Best For
ScrapingBee is the better choice when you need reliable, straightforward web scraping with minimal setup. It's ideal for developers who want to integrate scraping into existing applications without managing complex infrastructure. If you're building custom scrapers, need consistent performance, or want simple pricing based on request volume, ScrapingBee delivers exactly what you need without unnecessary complexity. Apify wins when you need comprehensive scraping solutions with minimal development time. It's perfect for SEO professionals who want ready-made SERP scrapers, social media monitoring, or complex multi-step automation workflows. If you're running multiple scraping projects simultaneously or need features like data processing, scheduling, and advanced monitoring, Apify's platform approach provides significantly more value.
The Verdict
For most SEO teams and developers, Apify offers better long-term value despite its steeper learning curve. The pre-built scrapers alone save months of development time, and the platform's automation features eliminate the need for additional infrastructure. ScrapingBee remains the superior choice for simple, high-volume API-based scraping where you want full control over the implementation and predictable pricing.