Best web scraping API for blocked and anti-bot sites
For heavily protected, anti-bot sites, Bright Data's Web Unlocker leads on both unblocking strength and the highest independently-reported success rate (98.44%), ahead of Zyte (93.14%). Treat success rates as the weakest figures here: they are target-dependent, conflict sharply between benchmarks (ScrapingBee's reported rate differs widely across two separate tests), and Bright Data's number comes from a competitor-published benchmark. A light estimate, not a first-hand measurement.
DefaultWeb UnlockerunblockingWeb UnlockersuccesratioWeb Unlocker
Provider offerings
| Offering | Price ($/1000 requests) | Success | Capabilities |
|---|---|---|---|
| Web UnlockerBright Data | 1.5 | 98.44% | — |
| Zyte APIZyte | 1* | 93.14% | LLM-readybrowser |
| FirecrawlFirecrawl | 0.83 | 63% | LLM-readybrowser |
| ScrapingBeeScrapingBee | 0.099* | — | LLM-ready |
| ScraperAPIScraperAPI | 0.149* | 68.95% | — |
| Apify (Web Scraping platform)Apify | 0.5* | — | LLM-readybrowser |
| BrowserbaseBrowserbase | 0.05* | — | browser |
* token-/credit-priced — the headline understates real per-unit cost, so it is excluded from the cheapest ranking.
Sources
- Bright Data — Web Unlocker pricing2026-06-22
- Zyte API pricing — Zyte documentation2026-06-22
- Firecrawl pricing2026-06-22
- ScrapingBee pricing2026-06-22
- ScraperAPI pricing2026-06-22
- Apify pricing2026-06-22
- Browserbase — Plans and Pricing (docs)2026-06-22
- Proxyway — Web Scraping API Report 2025 (independent benchmark)2026-06-22
- Scrapeway — ScrapingBee vs Firecrawl benchmark (run 13-19 June 2026)2026-06-22
- ScrapeCreators — Best Web Scraping APIs 2026 (aggregator, updated 31 May 2026)2026-06-22