Best Web Scraping APIs for 2026

Web scraping APIs have revolutionized web data extraction, by bundling the many aspects of the web scraping process into a single, easily accessible endpoint - including proxy management, anti-bot management, browser rendering, requests, geographical distribution and even parsing.

No wonder the global web scraping market is forecast by Mordor Intelligence to grow from $1.03 billion in 2025 to reach $2 billion by 2030.

But, with dozens of web scraping API providers on the market, many data-hungry businesses and developers are asking themselves: “What is the best web scraping API?”

Fortunately, that question has been answered by Proxyway, a blog and research provider that is one of the most respected, independent voices in the web scraping industry. Proxyway’s annual Web Scraping API Reports put API vendors’ services through a rigorous and impartial benchmarking process to reveal the best web scraping APIs that buyers should consider.

While many “best web scraping API” guides you may find on the web are actually produced by vendors, who tend to favourably rank their own services, the guide you are reading now is simply a summary of Proxyway’s Web Scraping API Report 2025, the industry’s most trusted barometer on the category.

Proxyway’s benchmark evaluated real-world performance across the full spectrum of providers - from full end-to-end web scraping APIs that handle access, unblocking, rendering, and structured extraction in a single call, to proxy-centric services and specialized tools focused on discrete parts of the scraping workflow.

Proxyway used 12 providers to extract from 15 big-brand, well-protected websites - specifically, 6,000 pages each. Vendors participated as test providers, but were not able to influence the study’s methodology. To prevent pre-optimization by the vendors, providers were not told, in advance, the list of target sites Proxyway would use.

Key dimensions included:

• Unblocking success rate.

• Average response time of successful requests.

• Results per hour, ie. sustained throughput.

• Cost.

• AI and structured extraction capabilities.

Here is how each API fared in Proxyway’s tests across 15 well-protected sites:

With Proxyway’s findings across five dimensions clear, let’s turn those scores into a helpful breakdown of the best web scraping APIs.

1. Zyte API - best overall web scraping API heading into 2026

Zyte API, which was also named the ”best overall web scraping API” in Proxyway’s early-2025 report, was the clear top performer in Proxyway’s latest annual benchmark - not by a small margin, but decisively.

On the hardest websites in the test set, Zyte consistently returned successful responses, while most other APIs failed at much higher rates. “Zyte did an amazing job at unblocking tough websites,” Proxyway said.

Zyte API also delivered the fastest average response times among successful requests and the highest sustained throughput of any provider tested. This combination of high success, low latency, and stable output under load made Zyte the most production-ready solution in the study.

On the cost side, Zyte showed the most flexible pricing of any platform - Proxyway said “Zyte costs peanuts” for most websites, while prices scale up for more difficult websites. This makes Zyte ideal for organizations that prioritize maximum reliability, strong performance on the hardest targets, and full end-to-end scraping capabilities, with cost planning appropriate for enterprise-scale extraction.

2. Decodo - strong unblocking performance with the best cost predictability

While Decodo performed well in the benchmark, its results were materially below Zyte’s - landing in the mid-to-high 80% range at 2 req/s and dropping further at 10 req/s. Decodo did, however, outperform most competitors on cost stability, with relatively flat pricing structures across site difficulty levels.

Decodo’s architecture focuses on unblocking and selector-based extraction rather than full structured schemas or AI-assisted workflows. For teams that don’t require the full functionality of an end-to-end scraping API but want stable, predictable economics, Decodo represents a compelling value-oriented alternative.

3. Oxylabs - stable, enterprise-grade performance with mature AI parsing

Oxylabs landed solidly in the top performance tier, with success rates tracking closely to Decodo and response times in the faster half of the benchmark. While not approaching Zyte’s upper-90% reliability levels, Oxylabs remained consistently strong across heavily-protected retail and SaaS targets.

Where Oxylabs differentiated itself was in AI-assisted parsing and structured extraction, offering both hosted browser endpoints and AI-driven data transformation. Its cost variance was relatively flat, making it suitable for larger organizations that value a balanced mix of reliability, enterprise tooling, and predictable operations.

4. ScrapingBee - capable on difficult targets, but cost escalates quickly

ScrapingBee performed better than expected on several of the benchmark’s hardest sites, ranking within the second tier of unblocking success. However, Proxyway said its credit-based pricing model is “evidently not ideal for opening protected websites” because retries accumulate quickly.

ScrapingBee works well for teams that need a simple, point-and-shoot method for unblocking moderately difficult sites. It is less suited for high-volume, cost-sensitive, or sustained enterprise workloads due to unpredictable cost scaling.

5. ZenRows - budget-friendly option for moderately protected sites

ZenRows delivered serviceable results for mid-protection targets but struggled on the hardest websites in the benchmark. Its sustained throughput on lower-friction sites was a highlight, while its concurrency and protection ceilings limited performance against advanced defenses. At 10 req/s, Proxyway reported: “ZenRows suffered the most, likely due to hitting concurrency limits.”

ZenRows is best suited for startups, prototypes, and moderate-scale workloads, particularly when scraping easier domains where cost remains low.

6. ScraperAPI - fast setup and low latency, but limited on protected content

ScraperAPI offered one of the simplest onboarding experiences and remained among the fastest providers in terms of request latency. But on protected sites, its success rate dropped sharply, resulting in high retry volume and diminished cost efficiency.

ScraperAPI is ideal for lightweight scraping tasks where speed and simplicity matter more than deep unblocking capabilities.

7. Crawlbase - adequate for basic crawling, not heavy protection

Crawlbase was consistent on lightly and moderately protected domains but saw significant performance degradation on hard targets. Throughput was steady on easy sites, but the API struggled to maintain success rates on the benchmark’s most difficult properties.

Crawlbase should be considered a general crawling tool, not a solution for extracting data from heavily defended commercial sites.

8. NetNut - strong proxy network, weak web scraping API performance

NetNut’s infrastructure performed well from a routing standpoint - unsurprising given its proxy heritage - but its unblocking performance against modern bot protections placed it near the bottom of the benchmark.

NetNut is more accurately described as a proxy network, not a web scraping API, and should be evaluated as such.

9. Nimble - optimized for volume, not protection

Nimble delivered high throughput on lightly protected sites but suffered large drops in success as protection increased. Retry overhead and cost inefficiency followed.

Nimble works best for bulk crawling where access friction is low.

10. Firecrawl - excellent crawler, poor unblocking API

Firecrawl excelled at large-scale crawling (e.g., AI ingestion, site-level capture), but recorded some of the lowest protected-site success rates in the entire study.

Proxyway also observed how Firecrawl’s “strategy of failing fast rather than repeating requests internally … offloads the burden of retrying to the user”.

Analysts said: “This API is best suited for crawling the long-tail rather than individual protected targets.” It is not a web scraping API for protected content and should be positioned as a crawler or ingestion tool rather than an unblocking service.

11. Apify - automation platform, not a standard scraping API

Apify’s actor-based design makes it extremely powerful for workflow automation - but also unsuitable for standardized scraping performance. Actors vary dramatically in configuration, resource allocation, and code quality, which led to highly variable benchmark results.

It is more accurate to classify Apify as an automation/orchestration platform rather than a web scraping API, and buyers should treat its unblocking capabilities accordingly.

12. Scrapeless - AI-first automation, not benchmarked for protection

Proxyway did not test Scrapeless for unblocking success, response time, or throughput under protected conditions. The platform focuses on browser automation and AI-assisted extraction, and should be considered experimental for production protected-site scraping going into 2026.

Proxyway’s benchmark highlights a key reality: not every company labeled a “web scraping API” serves the same role in a real-world data pipeline. The tools span end-to-end platforms, point-and-shoot unblocking services, proxy-centric solutions, and crawling or automation frameworks.

• For a true end-to-end web scraping API: Zyte API, Decodo, and Oxylabs form the clear top tier for protected-site reliability, throughput, and production readiness.

• For point-and-shoot unblocking or proxy-style tools: ScrapingBee, ScraperAPI, ZenRows, Nimble, NetNut, and Crawlbase work best as components within a broader stack.

• For crawling, automation, or AI ingestion: Apify and Firecrawl are best understood as orchestration platforms rather than protected-site scraping APIs.

The right choice going into 2026 depends less on overall rank and on which architectural approach fits your data strategy.

For organizations that want one API to handle access, rendering, and extraction reliably, Zyte API stands out as the most complete and proven option in Proxyway’s benchmark.