Your Scraper Worked Fine Yesterday
Today it's getting CAPTCHAs on every third request, half your IPs are banned, and you're rebuilding proxy rotation logic for the third time this quarter. Sound familiar?
That's the exact problem these three tools exist to solve — just in three different ways. We broke down what each one actually does, what it costs, and who it's genuinely built for, so you can pick once and get back to shipping.
Disclosure: This guide contains affiliate links. If you sign up through one, PostbackFlow may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. We're not going to tell you all three are "the best" just to get a click — below, we tell you exactly which one fits your situation, including when the answer is "not this one." Pricing and features are accurate as of July 2026 — confirm current numbers on each provider's pricing page before buying.
---
The 30-Second Answer
Skip the reading if you already know your situation:
- "I just want one API call to handle everything (proxies, JS rendering, CAPTCHAs) and never think about it again" → ScraperAPI
- "I'm building my own scraper/bot and need raw proxy IPs I control directly" → ProxyScrape
- "I mainly need data from Google, Amazon, or YouTube and don't want to pay for failed requests" → Scrape.do
Still not sure? Keep reading — the full breakdown is below, with real pricing math for each.
---
At a Glance
| | ScraperAPI | ProxyScrape | Scrape.do |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Fully managed scraping API | Raw proxy network | Scraping API + prebuilt "Ready Scraper" endpoints |
| You still manage proxies? | No — handled for you | Yes — that's the product | No — handled for you |
| Best for | Zero-infrastructure scraping | Custom scrapers needing IP control | High-value platforms (Google, Amazon, YouTube) |
| Free tier | 5,000 free API calls | Free proxy lists | 1,000 free credits, no card needed |
| Trusted by | 10,000+ companies (incl. Deloitte, Sony, Alibaba, Nielsen) | 20,000+ developers (GitHub, Reddit, Duke University) | E-commerce, travel, real estate & finance teams |
| Pricing model | Per API credit | Per proxy / bandwidth | Pay-per-successful-request |
Start Free with ScraperAPI — 5,000 API Calls →
Get Proxy Access with ProxyScrape →
Try Scrape.do Free — 1,000 Credits →
---
Why This Comparison, and How We Built It
We're not claiming a formal side-by-side lab benchmark with stopwatch timings — that's a claim a lot of "review" sites make without showing their work, and we'd rather be useful than impressive. This breakdown comes from each provider's own documentation, published pricing, and how their stated customer base actually uses them, cross-checked against what each tool is honest about *not* doing. Where something isn't publicly disclosed, we say so instead of guessing.
---
ScraperAPI: For When You Don't Want to Think About Infrastructure
The pitch, in one line: you send a URL, ScraperAPI sends back clean data — proxy rotation, headless browser rendering, and CAPTCHA-solving happen invisibly on their end.
That matters because the real cost of scraping usually isn't the API bill — it's the engineering hours spent babysitting proxy pools and patching CAPTCHA workarounds every time a target site updates its defenses. ScraperAPI's whole value proposition is deleting that maintenance job entirely. This is why it's positioned toward teams — including named users like Deloitte, Sony, Alibaba, and Nielsen — who need reliable data pipelines in e-commerce, market research, SEO, travel, and finance, not a side project to maintain scraping infrastructure.
- Where it's genuinely worth it: if your team has tried to run its own proxy rotation before and burned a week fixing it after a target site changed its bot-detection, that week is exactly what you're buying back.
- Where it's not the right fit: if you specifically need granular control over which IPs you use (say, for ad verification or brand protection work), a managed API abstracts that away — see ProxyScrape below instead.
- What you get for free: 5,000 API calls, no strings, enough to fully test it against your actual target site before spending anything.
Worth knowing before you commit:
- One API call replaces three separate problems (proxies, rendering, CAPTCHAs) — the main cost/time saving versus building it yourself.
- Works across a broad range of sites without custom configuration per target.
- Heavier JS-rendering workloads cost more credits, so it's worth estimating your rendering-heavy page volume before scaling.
Start Free with ScraperAPI — No Card Required →
---
ProxyScrape: For When You're Building Your Own Scraper
The pitch, in one line: instead of an API that scrapes *for* you, ProxyScrape hands you the raw proxy infrastructure — 120+ million residential IPs and roughly 40,000 datacenter IPs across 195 countries — so your own code stays in control.
This is the opposite trade-off from ScraperAPI: more control, more responsibility. If you're already running custom scraping logic, bot-testing, ad verification, or social account automation, you don't want a black-box API standing between you and the request — you want the IP, and you'll handle the rest. That's exactly who ProxyScrape is built for: developers and teams doing large-scale data extraction, AI/ML data collection, SEO rank tracking, social media management, and ad-verification or brand-protection work.
A rough cost example: ProxyScrape's residential plans start around $35.50 for 10GB. If your scraping job pulls roughly 5–10KB per page (typical for text-heavy pages before images), that 10GB could cover somewhere in the ballpark of 1–2 million page loads — though this varies a lot by page weight and how many retries your target site forces, so treat it as a starting estimate, not a guarantee, and check current bandwidth pricing before committing to a plan size.
- Where it's genuinely worth it: you already have (or are building) scraping/automation logic and need proxy volume + geographic diversity more than a managed pipeline.
- Where it's not the right fit: if you don't want to write or maintain request-handling logic yourself, you'll end up rebuilding what ScraperAPI already gives you out of the box.
- What you get for free: free proxy lists to test with before paying anything.
See ProxyScrape's Free Proxy Lists →
---
Scrape.do: For Google, Amazon & YouTube Data
The pitch, in one line: a managed scraping API like ScraperAPI's, but billed pay-for-success (failed requests aren't charged), with prebuilt "Ready Scraper" endpoints for major platforms so you skip writing a custom parser for Google, Amazon, or YouTube.
If your data needs are concentrated on a handful of big, well-known platforms — competitor pricing on Amazon, SERP tracking on Google, video metadata on YouTube — the ready-made endpoints save the exact engineering time you'd otherwise spend reverse-engineering each site's layout. And because you're billed per successful request, a run of failed attempts against a hard target doesn't quietly drain your budget the way flat per-call pricing can.
Scrape.do's own positioning leans toward e-commerce, travel, real estate, and finance companies, plus marketing, social, crypto, and recruiting teams pulling data from those major platforms specifically.
- Where it's genuinely worth it: your targets are mostly big-name platforms with existing Ready Scraper support, and unpredictable request-failure rates make flat-rate pricing feel risky.
- Where it's not the right fit: if your targets are long-tail, niche, or custom sites outside their prebuilt endpoints, you're back to general-purpose scraping — where ScraperAPI's broader out-of-the-box coverage may fit better.
- What you get for free: 1,000 credits, no credit card required — genuinely zero friction to test it against your actual use case today.
Claim 1,000 Free Credits — No Card Needed →
---
Head-to-Head: The Questions That Actually Decide It
"I don't want to manage proxies at all — which is easier?"
ScraperAPI and Scrape.do both fully manage proxies for you; ProxyScrape does not (that's the point of ProxyScrape — it's infrastructure, not a managed pipeline). If "easier" is the deciding factor, it's between the first two.
"My budget is unpredictable and I hate surprise bills."
Scrape.do's pay-for-success model means failed requests don't cost you anything — the closest thing to "pay only for what works" of the three.
"I need to scrape a huge variety of random, smaller sites, not just the big platforms."
ScraperAPI's general-purpose coverage is built for exactly this — Scrape.do's Ready Scraper advantage disappears once you're off Google/Amazon/YouTube-style targets.
"I need the IP addresses themselves for something other than scraping — ad verification, account management, geo-testing."
That's ProxyScrape's whole reason to exist. Neither of the other two gives you direct proxy access in the same way.
---
So, Which One Wins?
Honestly, it depends which problem you actually have, and that's not a cop-out. All three are solving different layers of the same underlying headache:
- Start with ScraperAPI if you want the fastest path from "I need data" to "I have data," with zero infrastructure to maintain.
- Start with ProxyScrape if you already have scraping logic and just need reliable, diverse IPs to run it through.
- Start with Scrape.do if your world is Google/Amazon/YouTube-shaped and you want to stop paying for requests that fail.
All three let you find out for free which one fits — that's faster than any comparison article, including this one, can tell you.
Try ScraperAPI Free →
Try ProxyScrape Free →
Try Scrape.do Free →
---
FAQ
Is web scraping legal?
Scraping publicly available data is generally legal in most jurisdictions, but a target site's own Terms of Service may restrict automated access regardless of general legality, and rules vary by country. Review the target site's terms and consult a legal professional for commercial-scale scraping or anything involving personal data.
Do I need both a scraping API and a separate proxy service?
No, usually not. ScraperAPI and Scrape.do already include proxy rotation, so you don't need to add ProxyScrape on top of either. ProxyScrape only makes sense as a standalone choice if you're running your own custom scraper without a managed API.
Which is cheapest for a small side project?
Start with whichever free tier best matches your target site: ScraperAPI's 5,000 free API calls or Scrape.do's 1,000 free credits if you want a managed API, or ProxyScrape's free proxy lists if you're coding your own scraper. All three cost nothing to test before you decide.
Can I switch between these later if I choose wrong?
Yes. None of these lock you into deep platform dependency — switching providers is usually a small code change since you're working through an API key or proxy credentials, not a proprietary framework.