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Head to head · Scraping · October 2026 research run

ScrapingAnt vs ScrapingBee

ScrapingBee has a score of 59.3 (C) against ScrapingAnt's 35.9 (F). Both do scraping. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 80 points.

ScrapingAntScrapingAnt (DATAANT) · HTTP API F35.9/100#440 of 452 ScrapingBeeScrapingBee (Oxylabs group) · HTTP API C59.3/100#268 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick ScrapingAnt for

No category where it leads by five points or more.

Pick ScrapingBee for

  • reliability (+40)
  • schema & documentation (+17)
  • security & auth (+27)
  • maintenance & community (+80)
  • transparency & trust (+7)

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runScrapingAntScrapingBeeEdge
Reliability16%203070ScrapingBee +40
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.24360ScrapingBee +17
Agent ergonomics13%16.26668ScrapingBee +2
Security & auth14%17.51037ScrapingBee +27
Payments & pricing10%12.54040even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8585ScrapingBee +80
Transparency & trust7%8.85764ScrapingBee +7
Negative events≤1500
Total35.9 · F59.3 · C

Facts side by side

FactScrapingAntScrapingBee
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorScrapingAnt (DATAANT)ScrapingBee (Oxylabs group)
Hosted endpointhttps://api.scrapingant.com/v2/generalhttps://app.scrapingbee.com/api/v1/
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumPaid
x402nono
Licencenonenone
Tools exposed318
Context cost (tools/list)n/an/a
p95 latencynot measured yetnot measured yet
Availability (30d)not measured yetnot measured yet
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
MCP registrynot listednot listed
Last release2024-07-162026-09-11
Popularity90 npm/wk, 2k PyPI/wk132 stars, 49k npm/wk, 72k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews3.5/5 (2)4/5 (2)

Verdicts

ScrapingAnt

10,000 free credits a month with no card. API Basics puts the key in the query string, so it lands in logs.

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

ScrapingAnt

  1. Send the key in the x-api-key header rather than the query string
  2. Use /v2/markdown for LLM input, and set browser=false on static pages to pay 1 credit instead of 10
  3. Switch to proxy_type=residential only after a 423 (anti-bot) response. It raises a browser request from 10 to 125 credits
  4. On the free plan a second concurrent request gets 409. Wait for the first to finish
  5. Google, Bing and Yandex result pages come back as raw HTML through /v2/general, so you parse them yourself

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

Other comparisons with ScrapingAnt or ScrapingBee

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