A ScrapingBee alternative with twice the credits at $49
Run twice the plain HTTP requests on the same budget. ScrapingBee Freelance includes 250,000 credits for $49/month. ScrapingAnt Startup includes 500,000 for the same price, with no plan concurrency cap and a free plan that renews 10,000 credits every month.
10,000 free credits every month · no card · one concurrent request on Free
The gap is widest at $49
Here are both price lists side by side, with monthly billing. ScrapingBee raises concurrency with each plan, from 25 on Hobby to 200 on Business. Paid ScrapingAnt plans have no plan concurrency cap at any tier, so you pick the worker count your targets tolerate.
| Monthly price | ScrapingBee | ScrapingAnt |
|---|---|---|
| $19 | Hobby75,000 credits · 25 concurrent | Enthusiast100,000 credits · no plan cap |
| $49 | Freelance250,000 credits · 50 concurrent | Startup500,000 credits · no plan cap |
| $99 | Startup1,000,000 credits · 100 concurrent | No plan at this price |
| $249 | Business3,000,000 credits · 200 concurrent | Business3,000,000 credits · no plan cap |
At $249 both Business plans include 3,000,000 credits. What differs there is concurrency and the cost of each request mode.
What $49 buys in each request mode
ScrapingBee Freelance and ScrapingAnt Startup both cost $49/month: 250,000 versus 500,000 credits. Each mode spends credits at its own rate, so the counts below assume the whole allowance goes to one mode.
| Request mode | ScrapingBee credits per request | ScrapingAnt credits per request | ScrapingBee requests | ScrapingAnt requests |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HTTP, classic / datacenter | 1 | 1 | 250,000 | 500,000 |
| Rendered HTML, classic / datacenter | 5 | 10 | 50,000 | 50,000 |
| HTTP, premium / residential | 10 | 25 | 25,000 | 20,000 |
| Rendered HTML, premium / residential | 25 | 125 | 10,000 | 4,000 |
Where ScrapingAnt covers more
Plain HTTP batches. At $49, ScrapingAnt Startup covers up to 500,000 plain HTTP requests and ScrapingBee Freelance covers 250,000. At $19 the split is 100,000 versus 75,000, and you can run them with as many workers as your targets allow.
Where ScrapingBee comes out ahead
Premium and residential traffic. At $49, ScrapingBee covers 25,000 versus 20,000 requests over HTTP and 10,000 versus 4,000 rendered. It also geotargets more countries: 40+ on classic proxies and 200+ on premium, against our 24.
Each ceiling is the monthly allowance divided by the credit cost, rounded down. Rendered requests on datacenter proxies tie at 50,000 at $49. Not in the table: ScrapingAnt Google requests on datacenter proxies cost 10 credits; browser page-source mode costs 2 credits on datacenter and 50 on residential; ScrapingBee stealth costs 75 credits and has no direct ScrapingAnt equivalent. Monthly billing without annual discounts; ScrapingBee prices exclude VAT.
Checked : ScrapingBee plans, ScrapingBee credit rules, ScrapingBee geolocation, ScrapingAnt plans, ScrapingAnt credit rules, ScrapingAnt proxy countries and ScrapingAnt concurrency policy. Check again before you buy.
10,000 free credits every month, not 1,000 once
ScrapingBee gives 1,000 free API credits when you sign up. ScrapingAnt’s free plan renews 10,000 credits every month: 10,000 plain HTTP requests or 1,000 rendered pages. No card needed.
Use it to point your parser at ScrapingAnt and check the output before you move any paid traffic. The free plan runs one request at a time and has domain restrictions.
See the paid plans →Move one request, check it, then move the queue
For a plain HTTP request you change the host, the key and one parameter. Your target URL and parser stay the same. ScrapingAnt takes x-api-key as a query parameter instead of a Bearer header.
# Plain HTTP; encode the full target URL once.
curl --get --max-time 75 'https://app.scrapingbee.com/api/v1/' \
--header "Authorization: Bearer $SCRAPINGBEE_API_KEY" \
--data-urlencode 'url=https://example.com/?page=2&sort=new' \
--data-urlencode 'render_js=false' \
--data-urlencode 'premium_proxy=false'# Same request: plain HTTP over datacenter proxies.
curl --get --max-time 45 'https://api.scrapingant.com/v2/general' \
--data-urlencode "x-api-key=$SCRAPINGANT_API_KEY" \
--data-urlencode 'url=https://example.com/?page=2&sort=new' \
--data-urlencode 'browser=false' \
--data-urlencode 'proxy_type=datacenter' \
--data-urlencode 'timeout=30'Make the HTTP mode explicit
Change the host and authentication. Both APIs render by default, so use
render_js=false/browser=falsefor plain HTTP.Check the output
Run a few of your URLs and compare the fields your parser reads. The
Ant-credits-costheader shows what each request cost.Move the queue
Switch a small batch first, then the rest. Keep the ScrapingBee adapter until the new route has run cleanly.
Check what the rest of your workflow needs
Synchronous HTML fetching is the easy part to move. Browser rendering, country selection and custom in-page JavaScript are available too, with their own settings and costs.
CSS waits map to wait_for_selector. XPath waits and JSON scenarios need rewriting, and residential results can differ from ScrapingBee premium on some sites.
Also comparing ZenRows? The ZenRows comparison covers concurrency caps and country pricing.
Keep these on ScrapingBee until you redesign them
- Five-minute IP sessions with
session_id - Screenshots, or your own proxy via
own_proxy - Automatic mode selection with
mode=auto/max_cost - Dedicated search and product APIs, and existing extraction schemas
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 customers say
Reviews from developers who use ScrapingAnt, published on Capterra.
★★★★★ 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.”
Is ScrapingAnt cheaper than ScrapingBee?
For plain HTTP, yes. At $49, ScrapingAnt covers up to 500,000 plain HTTP requests versus 250,000, and rendered datacenter requests tie at 50,000. ScrapingBee covers more premium/residential requests: 25,000 versus 20,000 over HTTP and 10,000 versus 4,000 rendered. At $19, plain HTTP is 100,000 versus 75,000, but ScrapingBee covers more rendered datacenter requests: 15,000 versus 10,000. At $249, both Business plans include 3,000,000 credits, so plain HTTP allowances are equal and ScrapingBee covers twice as many rendered requests.
Does choosing a country cost extra?
Not on either service. ScrapingAnt’s 24 documented proxy_country countries work on datacenter and residential proxies at the normal credit cost for each proxy type. ScrapingBee geotargets 40+ countries on classic proxies at its normal 1 or 5 credits, and 200+ countries on premium proxies at 10 or 25 credits. If you need a country outside ScrapingAnt’s list, ScrapingBee covers more.
Can I keep my ScrapingBee parameters?
Keep the target URL, then change the endpoint and key and map render_js to browser. Map country_code to proxy_country after checking the country is available. A CSS wait_for becomes wait_for_selector; XPath waits need rewriting. A JSON js_scenario has to be rewritten as Base64-encoded JavaScript. Stealth mode, sessions and extraction schemas have no automatic mapping.
What happens to sessions and response data?
ScrapingBee session_id keeps the same IP for five minutes, and cookies alone don’t reproduce that in the ScrapingAnt HTML API. Use /v2/general for HTML. For the target’s status, headers and cookies, use /v2/extended and update your response adapter, since its JSON envelope differs from ScrapingBee extraction output.
How do the free plans compare?
ScrapingAnt’s free plan renews 10,000 API credits every month, with one concurrent request and domain restrictions. ScrapingBee gives 1,000 free API credits once, when you sign up. Neither asks for a card.
Move your plain HTTP traffic first
Check your parser on an eligible page with the free plan, then switch the part of your queue that runs without a browser.
No card needed. The free plan has domain restrictions and one concurrent request.