ScraperAPI review
Best for mixed scraping workloads
ScraperAPI is a general-purpose scraping service with structured endpoints bolted on for the targets people ask for most, Google among them. You send a URL or a structured query, it deals with proxies, retries and blocks, and you get either raw HTML or parsed JSON back.
It is credit-based, and the credit cost per request is the thing to model rather than the headline plan size. A plain fetch is cheap, a Google SERP costs several credits, and adding JavaScript rendering multiplies it again. A plan advertising 100,000 credits is nothing like 100,000 SERPs.
Who ScraperAPI is for
Teams whose scraping is broader than search: SERPs plus marketplace pages, competitor sites and whatever else the roadmap adds. If Google results are all you need, a dedicated SERP provider is cheaper and returns cleaner data.
Strengths and limits
What it does well
- One integration covers SERPs and arbitrary page scraping, so a widening scope does not mean a new vendor.
- Blocks and retries are genuinely handled, which is the part teams most often underestimate when they build their own.
- Structured endpoints for common targets save you writing and maintaining parsers.
- A 5,000-credit trial is enough to measure what your real request mix actually consumes.
Where it falls short
- Credit multipliers make the headline plan size misleading. Always divide by your typical request cost.
- More expensive per SERP than a dedicated provider like Serper or ValueSERP.
- Subscription only, so a quiet month still costs the full plan.
ScraperAPI pricing
Plans start at $49 a month for 100,000 credits on the Hobby tier, rising through larger credit bundles. The important detail is that credits are not requests: a plain HTTP fetch is cheap, a structured Google request costs several credits, and JavaScript rendering adds ten more on top.
Work out your blended credit cost per useful result before comparing this against a per-search provider. A workload that looks like 100,000 requests can easily be 300,000 credits.
Verdict
A reasonable default when scraping is a broad, ongoing need rather than a search-specific one. For SERPs alone the economics do not work against Serper, ValueSERP or DataForSEO. Model the credit multipliers against your real request mix, because that is where the surprise lives.
ScraperAPI FAQ
How much does ScraperAPI cost?
From $49 a month for 100,000 credits on the Hobby plan. Credits are consumed at different rates by request type, so the number of usable Google SERPs is well below the headline credit count.How do ScraperAPI credits work?
Different request types cost different amounts. A plain fetch is cheapest, structured endpoints cost several credits, and JavaScript rendering adds significantly more. Divide your plan's credits by your blended per-request cost to get real capacity.Is there a free tier?
A 7-day trial with 5,000 credits rather than an ongoing free allowance. That is enough to measure your actual credit burn before committing.ScraperAPI or a dedicated SERP API?
ScraperAPI when your scraping goes well beyond search. A dedicated provider when it does not, because per-SERP they are substantially cheaper and parse Google results more thoroughly.
Other providers worth a look
This is an independent review. We have no affiliate relationship with ScraperAPI, earn nothing if you sign up, and no provider pays for placement in the directory. Prices were read from the vendor's own pages in August 2026 and change without notice.