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Head to head · Scraping · October 2026 research run

ScrapingBee vs Zyte API

Zyte API scores 69.7 (B) on agent readiness against ScrapingBee's 59.2 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. ScrapingBee leads on maintenance & community. Both do scraping.

ScrapingBeeScrapingBee (Oxylabs group) · HTTP API C59.2/100#504 of 841 Zyte APIZyte Group Limited · HTTP API B69.7/100#166 of 841

Which one, for what

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 77

Watch for

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

Zyte API B

Good for An agent or pipeline that fetches protected pages and wants the service to choose proxy and browser per site and to bill only success, and teams already on Scrapy.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 85 against 70
  • Schema & documentation, 85 against 60
  • Security & auth, 55 against 37

Watch for

Request price depends on the target site's tier, from $0.13 to $1.27 per 1,000 HTTP requests and $1.01 to $16.08 with a browser on pay-as-you-go

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runScrapingBeeZyte APIEdge
Reliability16%207085Zyte API +15
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26085Zyte API +25
Agent ergonomics13%16.26872Zyte API +4
Security & auth14%17.53755Zyte API +18
Payments & pricing10%12.54040even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88577ScrapingBee +8
Transparency & trust7%8.86366Zyte API +3
Negative events≤1500
Total59.2 · C69.7 · B

Facts side by side

FactScrapingBeeZyte API
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorScrapingBee (Oxylabs group)Zyte Group Limited
Hosted endpointhttps://app.scrapingbee.com/api/v1/https://api.zyte.com/v1/extract
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthAPI keyOAuth or key
PricingPaidPay per use
x402nono
LicencenoneProprietary service under Zyte's terms of service. The Python client is BSD 3-Clause, and the Agentic Web Data plugin is under Zyte's own end-user licence
Tools exposed1834
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-09-112026-10-05
Terms last updated2024-07-152026-09-22
Privacy policy last updated2024-07-152024-08-30
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes
Popularity132 stars, 49k npm/wk, 72k PyPI/wk42k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews4/5 (2)none

Verdicts

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.

Zyte API

One POST endpoint with an OpenAPI 3 contract picks proxies, browser rendering and extraction per site, bills only successful responses, and sends problem+json errors with Retry-After. Prices vary by target site across five tiers, so cost per request isn't known before the site is assigned one, and no dated API changelog was found.

Before you call either

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

Zyte API

  1. Send the API key as the Basic auth username with an empty password to https://api.zyte.com/v1/extract. Set only one of httpResponseBody or browserHtml, or one extraction field
  2. Ask for httpResponseBody before browserHtml. Browser requests cost about eight to thirteen times more per tier
  3. Retry 429, 503 and 520 after the Retry-After seconds, with backoff. They aren't billed. Don't retry 400, 401, 422 or 451
  4. Read statusCode in a 200 response. A target site's 404 comes back as a successful, billed Zyte API response
  5. Have the owner set a blocking spending limit on the key you use. A 403 /auth/account-suspended means the limit or the trial month ended

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, ScrapingBee or Zyte API?

Zyte API scores 69.7 (B) on agent readiness against ScrapingBee's 59.2 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. ScrapingBee leads on maintenance & community.

Do ScrapingBee and Zyte API need an API key?

ScrapingBee needs an API key. Zyte API takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call ScrapingBee and Zyte API without installing anything?

Yes. ScrapingBee has a hosted endpoint at https://app.scrapingbee.com/api/v1/ and Zyte API at https://api.zyte.com/v1/extract.

Other comparisons with ScrapingBee or Zyte API

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