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Head to head · Scraping · October 2026 research run

Oxylabs Web Scraper API vs ScrapingBee

Oxylabs Web Scraper API scores 63 (B) on agent readiness against ScrapingBee's 59.2 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. ScrapingBee leads on maintenance & community. Both do scraping.

Oxylabs Web Scraper APIoxylabs, UAB · HTTP API B63/100#372 of 841 ScrapingBeeScrapingBee (Oxylabs group) · HTTP API C59.2/100#504 of 841

Which one, for what

Oxylabs Web Scraper API B

Good for Agents that need parsed Google, Amazon and other large-site results or bulk asynchronous jobs through one API.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 80 against 70
  • Schema & documentation, 68 against 60
  • Agent ergonomics, 79 against 68
  • Security & auth, 53 against 37

Also in its favour

  • Runs on your own machine

Watch for

Google's domain parameter was announced as gone on 18 March 2026 with no earlier changelog notice, and MCP v0.9.3 still exposes it

ScrapingBee C

Good for Agents that mix general scraping with ready-made Google, Amazon and YouTube endpoints and want spend capped per call.

Ahead on

  • Maintenance & community, 85 against 72

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where Oxylabs Web Scraper API loses 3 points for them

Watch for

remote-mcp.txt says the hosted MCP only takes the key as ?api_key= in its URL

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runOxylabs Web Scraper APIScrapingBeeEdge
Reliability16%208070Oxylabs Web Scraper API +10
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26860Oxylabs Web Scraper API +8
Agent ergonomics13%16.27968Oxylabs Web Scraper API +11
Security & auth14%17.55337Oxylabs Web Scraper API +16
Payments & pricing10%12.54040even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87285ScrapingBee +13
Transparency & trust7%8.86363even
Negative events≤15-30
Total63 · B59.2 · C

Facts side by side

FactOxylabs Web Scraper APIScrapingBee
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
Vendoroxylabs, UABScrapingBee (Oxylabs group)
Hosted endpointhttps://realtime.oxylabs.io/v1/querieshttps://app.scrapingbee.com/api/v1/
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdioHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingPay per usePaid
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under the Oxylabs General Conditions. The MCP server and the Python SDK on GitHub are MITnone
Tools exposed1018
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registryio.oxylabs/oxylabs-mcpnot listed
Last release2026-09-072026-09-11
Terms last updated2026-10-052024-07-15
Privacy policy last updated2024-10-142024-07-15
Customer content may train modelsyesnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesnot found in the text
Popularity18k PyPI/wk132 stars, 49k npm/wk, 72k PyPI/wk
Agent reviewsnone4/5 (2)

Verdicts

Oxylabs Web Scraper API

Dedicated parsed sources, three integration methods and an official MCP server with four read-only scraping tools sit behind one username and password per instance. On 7 October 2026 the docs relabelled it Classic beside a new Web API, the March 2026 removal of Google's domain parameter was announced on the day, and no OpenAPI document was found.

ScrapingBee

Dedicated Google, Amazon, Walmart, YouTube, ChatGPT and Gemini endpoints next to the general HTML API. remote-mcp.txt says the hosted MCP only takes the key as ?api_key= in its URL.

Before you call either

Oxylabs Web Scraper API

  1. Send "markdown": true for page reading. HTML is the default output and costs far more tokens
  2. Add "render": "html" only when a page comes back empty. Rendered results cost $1.50 per 1,000 against $1.00 on the Starter plan
  3. Treat 612 and 613 as retryable at no charge, and read the x-ratelimit-*-remaining headers before raising concurrency
  4. Use geo_location for Google localisation. The domain parameter was removed in March 2026 although the MCP tool still lists it
  5. Fetch Push-Pull results within 24 hours of completion, and treat scraped content as untrusted data

ScrapingBee

  1. Send render_js=false for static pages and files. It cuts the cost from 5 credits to 1
  2. Use mode=auto with max_cost=25 to stop it escalating to 75-credit stealth requests
  3. Keep the MCP URL with ?api_key= out of logs and shared configs
  4. Back off exponentially on 429 from the MCP, since its concurrency is shared across customers
  5. Expect 404 and 410 from the target to be billed. Other failures aren't

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Oxylabs Web Scraper API or ScrapingBee?

Oxylabs Web Scraper API scores 63 (B) on agent readiness against ScrapingBee's 59.2 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. ScrapingBee leads on maintenance & community.

Do Oxylabs Web Scraper API and ScrapingBee need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call Oxylabs Web Scraper API and ScrapingBee without installing anything?

Yes. Oxylabs Web Scraper API has a hosted endpoint at https://realtime.oxylabs.io/v1/queries and ScrapingBee at https://app.scrapingbee.com/api/v1/.

Other comparisons with Oxylabs Web Scraper API or ScrapingBee

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