Scraping API credits explained: what a request really costs on ScrapingBee, ZenRows and ScraperAPI

Everything here comes from each provider's published pricing and documentation, checked on Sep 24 to 26, 2026. The product pages on ScrapeSelect quote the exact wording and link to it.

Credits per request

Sources: ScrapingBee · ZenRows · ScraperAPI. These are fixed lookup tables, not multipliers: premium plus rendering is 25 on all three, not 10 × 5.

What a credit costs

A credit is worth whatever the plan charges for it, and bigger plans charge less. Per 1,000 credits, on each provider's smallest, a mid-size and its largest self-serve monthly plan:

Put the two tables together and the same page costs very different amounts. At each provider's mid-size plan (ScrapingBee Startup at $99, ZenRows Launch L2 at $99, ScraperAPI Startup at $149), 1,000 pages cost:

A rendered page on ScraperAPI's Startup plan costs three times what it costs on ScrapingBee's: twice the credits, at a higher price per credit. At the largest plans the gap narrows: all three charge between $0.075 and $0.092 per 1,000 credits there.

Country targeting: free, 10×, or a bigger plan

This is where the tables above stop telling you the price. For 100,000 static pages a month, our cost engine gives:

• ZenRows only targets countries on premium proxies: "Proxy Country requires Premium Proxy to be enabled". Every geotargeted request costs at least 10 credits instead of 1, so 100,000 pages need 1 million credits and a $199 plan.
• ScraperAPI adds no credits for a country, but its two cheapest plans can't pick one: "Hobby and Startup plans support only US and EU regional-based geotargeting (individual country codes are not supported)". US traffic works on the $49 plan; German IPs need the $299 Business plan.
• ScrapingBee geotargets on its standard proxies at no extra cost, but "each has its own list of supported countries". * Check that your country is on the standard list; if it is only on the premium list, the price is 10 credits a request.

Four more things the credit table doesn't say

• Defaults. ScrapingBee renders JavaScript unless you turn it off, so a request with default settings costs 5 credits, not 1. On static pages, pass render_js=false.
• Which site you scrape. ScraperAPI prices some domains separately: "Amazon costs 5, Google and Bing (including their subdomains) cost 25, and LinkedIn costs 30. Sites behind bot protection like Cloudflare, Datadome, or PerimeterX add 10 credits per request". ScrapingBee charges 15 credits for Google searches. A credit estimate built on the generic table can be several times too low for those targets.
• Unused credits. On ScrapingBee "any unused credits will not roll over", and on ScraperAPI the "credit balance resets when your subscription renews". ZenRows carries unused plan credits into the next period, once. If your volume varies month to month, that difference is worth money.
• Running out. None of the three has open-ended pay-as-you-go on small plans. ScrapingBee sells one-off packs (priced only in the dashboard) or you upgrade; ZenRows allows up to four top-ups per period; ScraperAPI offers pay-as-you-go from its Scaling plan up, at a rate it doesn't publish, and below that returns 429s until the next period.

Working out your own cost

Credits per request × requests per month tells you which plan you need; the plan's price per credit tells you what you pay. Count retries only where they are billed (see what each provider bills), and check the country and domain rules above. The calculator does all of this for your workload, and the volume comparison shows where each provider's plan steps fall.