Skip the browser pool. Get rendered HTML.
Same headless Chrome, same wait_for_selector, same JS execution — fully managed. No Docker, no Kubernetes, no proxy rotation code. One API call replaces twenty lines of Playwright setup.
10,000 free credits · failed requests cost 0 · same Chrome, none of the upkeep
# One call. Real headless Chrome. Rotated proxy. Anti-bot handled.
$ curl -G "https://api.scrapingant.com/v2/general" \
--data-urlencode "url=https://example.com" \
--data-urlencode "browser=true" \
--data-urlencode "wait_for_selector=.content" \
-H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"
<!DOCTYPE html>
<!-- fully rendered, including post-hydration content -->import requests
resp = requests.get(
"https://api.scrapingant.com/v2/general",
params={
"url": "https://example.com",
"browser": "true",
"wait_for_selector": ".content",
"proxy_type": "residential",
},
headers={"x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY"},
)
print(resp.text)const url = "https://api.scrapingant.com/v2/general";
const qs = new URLSearchParams({
url: "https://example.com",
browser: "true",
wait_for_selector: ".content",
});
const res = await fetch(`${url}?${qs}`, {
headers: { "x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY" },
});
const html = await res.text();// Before — Playwright (~20 lines + infra)
const { chromium } = require("playwright");
async function scrape(url) {
const browser = await chromium.launch();
const ctx = await browser.newContext({ proxy: ... });
const page = await ctx.newPage();
await page.goto(url);
await page.waitForSelector(".content");
const html = await page.content();
await browser.close();
return html;
}
// + browser pool · retries · proxy rotation · anti-bot
// After — ScrapingAnt (3 lines, all of the above included)
const r = await fetch(`https://api.scrapingant.com/v2/general?url=${url}&browser=true&wait_for_selector=.content`,
{ headers: { "x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY" } });
const html = await r.text();Replace the parts you didn't want to own.
Three things you stop building the day you swap to the API.
No browser infra
No Chromium binary, no Docker image, no Kubernetes orchestration, no zombie-process firefighting. The cluster is hosted.
Parameter parity →3 lines, not 20
Replace chromium.launch(), contexts, pages, and cleanup with a single fetch. Same selectors and waits, just as URL parameters.
Anti-bot built in
2M+ residential IPs, 50K+ datacenter, fresh fingerprint per request, Cloudflare bypass — flip a parameter, not a stealth plugin.
Cluster details →Same controls. Simpler call surface.
Every Playwright knob you actually use in scraping has a one-to-one URL parameter on the API. waitForSelector becomes wait_for_selector. page.evaluate becomes a base64-encoded js_snippet. Proxy context becomes proxy_type. Geolocation becomes proxy_country. The browser launch is a single browser=true.
- Real headless Chrome — same engine, same DOM you'd get locally
- Mix and match per call:
browser=falsefor cheap static fetches - No browser binary on disk, no profile management, no headless flag tuning
Three lines replace twenty.
The Playwright code your scrape job spends most of its time in — browser launch, context setup, page navigation, selector waits, cleanup — collapses into a single fetch. Same selectors, same waits, plus the proxy, retry, and anti-bot logic that sits underneath every successful scraper.
- No browser pool to size, no zombie processes to babysit
- Same logic runs in Lambda, edge, or anywhere fetch works
- Failed requests cost zero credits — no charge for blocked pages
Same cluster. Same uptime.
Every API call rides the same headless Chrome cluster, rotating residential and datacenter proxies, CAPTCHA avoidance, TLS fingerprinting, and automatic retries — the same stack that backs the JavaScript rendering API, LLM-ready Markdown, and the MCP server. You don't pay for the build-out; you call the endpoint.
- Fresh fingerprint per request — no stealth plugin to maintain
- Switch
proxy_typetoresidentialper call for tougher targets - Country-pin requests with
proxy_countryacross 25+ regions - Failed requests cost zero credits — never pay for a broken page
Fire a thousand requests at once.
On a self-hosted Chrome cluster, concurrency is bounded by RAM, CPU, and process limits — every extra parallel browser pushes against the same server. With ScrapingAnt, a thousand simultaneous fetches go out to a cluster that already runs at that scale. Your code stops being a queue manager and goes back to being a fetch loop.
- No queue management code — just dispatch every URL in your list
- Same response time at 10 RPS or 1,000 RPS — burst whenever the job needs it
- Lambda, Cloud Run, Workers — all hit the same endpoint without coordinating on a shared pool
- Drain a 100K-URL backlog in minutes, not hours
Where teams swap it in.
Six concrete spots where teams move from a self-hosted browser pool to the API.
Production scrapers
Move recurring scrape jobs off self-managed Chrome. Same selectors, same wait conditions — but the cluster is someone else's problem.
Talk to us →JS-heavy SPAs
React, Vue, Next.js, dashboards behind hydration — pass wait_for_selector, get the post-hydration DOM. No headless Chrome on your boxes.
Anti-bot-walled sources
Cloudflare, Akamai, PerimeterX — the proxy fleet, TLS fingerprinting, and CAPTCHA avoidance live behind the API. Switch to residential per call when needed.
Talk to us →High-concurrency batch jobs
Fire 1,000 parallel requests without queue management. The cluster scales — your code stays as simple as a fetch loop.
Talk to us →Lambda / Edge functions
No 250MB Chromium binary, no cold-start headache. Hit the API from any serverless runtime; the rendering happens elsewhere.
Talk to us →AI agents needing live web
Pair with the MCP server so Claude / Cursor / Cline read rendered pages mid-task. Same engine — agent gets a clean DOM, not a JS shell.
Talk to us →
Pricing
Industry leading pricing that scales with your business.
|
Plans
|
Enthusiast
100K credits / mo
$19/mo
|
★ Most Popular
Startup
500K credits / mo
$49/mo
|
Business
3M credits / mo
$249/mo
|
Business Pro
8M credits / mo
$599/mo
|
Custom
10M+ credits / mo
$699+/mo
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly API credits | 100,000 | 500,000 | 3,000,000 | 8,000,000 | 10M+ |
| Support channel | Priority email | Priority email | Priority email | Priority + dedicated | |
| Integration help | Docs only | Custom code snippets | Debug sessions | Priority debug sessions | Full enterprise onboarding |
| Expert assistance | — |  |
|
|
|
| Custom proxy pools | — | — | |
|
|
| Custom anti-bot avoidances | — | — | |
|
|
| Dedicated account manager | — | — | |
|
|
| Start Free | Start Free → | Start Free | Start Free | Talk to Sales |
What teams are saying.
From solo developers shipping side projects to enterprise pipelines at Fortune 500s.
★★★★★ 5.0 on Capterra →★★★★★“Onboarding and API integration was smooth and clear. Everything works great. The support was excellent.”
★★★★★“Great communication with co-founders helped me to get the job done. Great proxy diversity and good price.”
★★★★★“This product helps me to scale and extend my business. The setup is easy and support is really good.”
Frequently asked questions.
Still curious? Get in touch with our team — we usually reply within hours.
What is a Playwright alternative for web scraping?
A Playwright alternative for web scraping is a managed API that handles the parts of Playwright most teams actually use for scraping — Headless Chrome rendering, proxy rotation, anti-bot bypass, retries, and cluster scaling — without you running browser binaries, Docker containers, or stealth plugins. ScrapingAnt's JavaScript rendering API is one: pass a URL with browser=true and you get back the post-hydration DOM. Same selectors and waits you'd write in Playwright, expressed as URL parameters: wait_for_selector, js_snippet, proxy_type, proxy_country.
Is ScrapingAnt really a Playwright replacement?
For web scraping use cases — yes. ScrapingAnt handles browser rendering, proxy rotation, and anti-bot bypass — the same things you'd use Playwright for in scraping. If you need complex interactions beyond scraping (testing, end-to-end automation, recording flows), Playwright is still the right tool. But if your goal is “get the rendered HTML at scale,” the API path is simpler and more cost-effective.
What about page interactions like clicks and scrolls?
Use the js_snippet parameter — it works like page.evaluate() in Playwright. Execute any JavaScript on the page: click buttons, scroll to load more, expand accordions, fill forms. Base64-encode your snippet and pass it to the API.
How does proxy rotation work?
Automatic. Every request uses a different IP from our pool of 2M+ residential or 50K+ datacenter proxies. No proxy lists to manage, no rotation logic, no failed-proxy handling. Choose proxy_type=residential or proxy_type=datacenter per call.
Can I wait for dynamic content like in Playwright?
Yes. The wait_for_selector parameter mirrors Playwright's page.waitForSelector(). Pass any CSS selector and we wait for that element to appear before returning the HTML — perfect for SPAs, AJAX content, and infinite scroll.
What about Cloudflare-protected sites?
Built-in bypass for Cloudflare, Akamai, and other anti-bot systems. Where raw Playwright would need stealth plugins, fingerprint rotation, and proxy quality management on your side, the API handles all of it. Higher success rates with zero configuration.
How many concurrent requests can I make?
Effectively unconstrained from your side. The cluster manages the browser pool — fire as many parallel requests as your job needs. No memory caps to tune, no queue to babysit. This is one of the biggest practical wins over self-hosted Playwright, which caps out at the RAM and CPU of the box you're running it on.
Can I use Playwright AND ScrapingAnt together?
Plenty of teams do. Use Playwright locally for testing or one-off interactive flows, and call ScrapingAnt for production scrape jobs that need to run thousands of times a day across thousands of IPs. The API and the framework solve different ends of the same spectrum.
How is this different from the Playwright MCP server?
Different shapes for different jobs. The Playwright MCP server is for AI agents that need to drive a browser inside an LLM loop — it's expensive on tokens because each call ships the full accessibility tree. The ScrapingAnt scraping API is for code that just needs rendered HTML at scale: ~10× less context, no token-burning, hosted infrastructure. If you're evaluating a Playwright MCP alternative for AI agents specifically, see our MCP server instead.
Need a custom plan?
High-volume pricing, residential pool tuning, dedicated infrastructure, custom scrapers — drop us a line and a real human gets back within a few hours.
“Our clients are pleasantly surprised by the response speed of our team.”
