# 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. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapingant-vs-scrapingbee
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapingant-vs-scrapingbee.md (~1,700 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapingant-vs-scrapingbee.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapingant-vs-scrapingbee.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-05

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.

- ScrapingAnt: grade F, 35.9/100, rank #440 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/scrapingant.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/scrapingant.json
- ScrapingBee: grade C, 59.3/100, rank #268 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/scrapingbee.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/scrapingbee.json

## Which one, for what

Pick ScrapingAnt for nothing in particular (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

| Category | Weight | ScrapingAnt | ScrapingBee | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 30 | 70 | ScrapingBee +40 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 43 | 60 | ScrapingBee +17 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 66 | 68 | ScrapingBee +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 10 | 37 | ScrapingBee +27 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 40 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 5 | 85 | ScrapingBee +80 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 57 | 64 | ScrapingBee +7 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **35.9 · F** | **59.3 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | ScrapingAnt | ScrapingBee |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | ScrapingAnt (DATAANT) | ScrapingBee (Oxylabs group) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.scrapingant.com/v2/general` | `https://app.scrapingbee.com/api/v1/` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | none | none |
| Tools exposed | 3 | 18 |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2024-07-16 | 2026-09-11 |
| Popularity | 90 npm/wk, 2k PyPI/wk | 132 stars, 49k npm/wk, 72k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (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

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