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Best Smartproxy Alternative in 2025: Why ScraperAPI Outperforms

Scrape smarter, not harder with ScraperAPI

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Best Smartproxy Alternative

Trusted by 10,000+ web scraping and data teams who switched from solutions like Smartproxy for better reliability, greater scale, and full-featured scraping.

Quick Overview

About ScraperAPI

ScraperAPI is a powerful and efficient web scraping API and tool designed to empower developers, data scientists, and businesses with reliable data extraction at scale.

  • Success rate 95%+ even on difficult sites
  • Transparent pay-per-successful-request pricing model
  • Advanced bypassing mechanisms
  • JS rendering, CAPTCHA handling, and worldwide geotargeting
  • Structured outputs like JSON, CSV, Text, and Markdown

About SmartProxy

Smartproxy is a proxy provider with specialized eCommerce, SERP, social media, and general web scraping APIs. While it provides a range of features, it comes with challenges.

  • Advanced features like JavaScript rendering and structured outputs are only available on higher-tier plans, increasing costs.
  • No built-in CAPTCHA solving, requiring additional tools and added complexity.
  • High-volume scraping becomes expensive, with limited request quotas and higher per-request pricing.
  • Features are spread across multiple products, requiring separate subscriptions for different use cases.



Why Choose ScraperAPI Over Smartproxy

After comparing ScraperAPI and Smartproxy’s scraping APIs, it’s clear that ScraperAPI is the better choice for web scraping. ScraperAPI was explicitly built as a web scraping tool, offering built-in CAPTCHA handling, JavaScript rendering, scheduling options, and more without adding extra costs.

Looking at Smartproxy’s eCommerce Scraping API:

  • The Core Plan ($499/month) includes 2 million requests but lacks essential features like JavaScript rendering and structured outputs (JSON/CSV), which are critical for effective eCommerce scraping.
  • The Advanced Plan, currently discounted to $300/month (usually $500), includes those features but limits you to just 250,000 requests, making it far more expensive per request — over 10x the cost of the Core plan.

By comparison, ScraperAPI’s Business Plan ($299/month) includes 3 million API credits, allowing you to scrape over 600,000 eCommerce pages (at 5 credits per request). All advanced features like JavaScript rendering, structured outputs, and CAPTCHA solving are included, with no upgrade required.

 

Smartproxy’s Advanced Plan delivers less volume and value, even at a discount. ScraperAPI offers more scale, features, and cost-efficiency in one plan.

 

So, how do our prices and features compare to Smartproxy?

Pricing Overview

Features

API Credits

Successful Requests

Proxy management

Javascript Rendering

Browser Automation

Output formats

CAPTCHA solving

Scheduling features

Geotargeting

Support

Cost

 

ScraperAPI’s Business Plan

3,000,000 API credits

600,000 successful e-commerce requests

Fully automated

Included

Automatic

JSON, CSV, Text, Markdown

Included

Included

150+ countries

24/7 expert assistance

$299/month

 

Smartproxy’s eCommerce scraping API (Advanced Plan)

N/A

250,000 successful requests

 

Included

Included

Might require a manual setup

HTML, JSON, Parsed 

Not included (requires additional tools)

Not Included

195+ IP locations worldwide

24/7 tech support

$500/month (currently discounted at $300)

One Unified Scraping Plan vs. Multiple Product Plans

Smartproxy splits its scraping capabilities across multiple products — one for web scraping, another for SERP data, and others for eCommerce or jobs. Each requires separate subscriptions and comes with different feature sets and pricing.

ScraperAPI keeps it simple. Every plan includes access to all scraping targets and features — no need to manage or upgrade across multiple tools.

This includes our Structured Data Endpoints, which match the functionality of Smartproxy’s separate scrapers but are available in every ScraperAPI plan by default:

  • Amazon, Google, Walmart, eBay, and Redfin Scrapers — all return clean, structured data in JSON or CSV.
  • Ready-to-use outputs for product pages, search results, reviews, business listings, job posts, and more.
  • No custom parsing is required, and there is no need to switch APIs based on your target.

Plus, every ScraperAPI plan comes with:

  • Datapipeline for task scheduling and automation
  • JavaScript rendering via simple parameter
  • Structured outputs in HTML, JSON, CSV, Markdown, and Text
  • Advanced proxy rotation and CAPTCHA solving
  • Geotargeting for 150+ countries is included at no extra cost

In contrast:

  • Smartproxy separates core features across different scrapers based on the scraping target.
  • Each Smartproxy product may have its own pricing, usage limits, and feature restrictions.
  • Using multiple Smartproxy scraping tools means managing numerous subscriptions and facing feature limitations unless you upgrade further.

ScraperAPI simplifies everything by bundling all capabilities into one streamlined, full-featured plan — no fragmentation, no surprises.

Get All the Advanced Features You Need at No Extra Cost

Most of Smartproxy’s Scraping APIs have two internal plans, and critical features are only available in the Advanced version. Even after selecting Smartproxy’s Scraping API, you must choose between the Core and Advanced plans. The Core plan offers only basic functionality, while the Advanced plan unlocks the complete toolset. Many essential features — like JavaScript rendering, structured outputs, task scheduling, and browser automation — are only available in the Advanced version.

ScraperAPI, by contrast, includes all advanced functionality by default, regardless of your pricing tier. There’s no second upgrade required to unlock full scraping capabilities.

Smartproxy’s E-commerce Core vs. Advanced Plans

 

Core plan

Advanced plan

Limited to basic features like HTML output and simple scraping

Unlocks JavaScript rendering, JSON/CSV outputs, and advanced rotation

Costs $499/month for 5M requests but lacks essential tools for modern scraping

Costs $500/month (discounted at 300$) but only allows 250k requests, far fewer than ScraperAPI

 

The pricing also reveals a major difference in value. Smartproxy’s Core and Advanced plans are listed at $500/month, but the Advanced plan comes with far fewer requests. While the Core plan includes 5 million requests per month (at $0.10 per 1,000 requests), the Advanced plan only consists of 250,000 requests — meaning you’re paying $2.00 per 1,000 requests at the full price. Even with their current promotional discount at $300/month, the cost is still $1.20 per 1,000 requests — over 10x higher than the Core plan, just to access features that are baseline in other tools.

In contrast, ScraperAPI gives you full functionality and competitive pricing in every plan without forcing you to trade volume for features or pay extra to do standard tasks.

Built-in CAPTCHA Handling Without Extra Tools or Costs

CAPTCHAs are one of the most common anti-bot measures used by websites to block automated scraping. For enterprise web scraping tool, the ability to handle CAPTCHAs is critical because:

 

  1. High Success Rates: CAPTCHAs can block up to 90% of scraping requests if not handled properly, significantly reducing data collection efficiency.
  2. Time Savings: Manually solving CAPTCHAs or integrating third-party solvers adds complexity and slows down scraping workflows.
  3. Cost Efficiency: Third-party CAPTCHA solvers charge per CAPTCHA, which can quickly escalate costs for large-scale scraping projects.
  4. Reliability: Automated CAPTCHA solving ensures consistent access to data, even on heavily protected websites.

 

ScraperAPI eliminates the need for third-party CAPTCHA solvers by offering built-in CAPTCHA solving. ScraperAPI automatically detects and bypass CAPTCHAs with a simple API call, ensuring high success rates and smooth scraping.

 

On the other hand, Smartproxy does not provide built-in CAPTCHA solving on their web scraper, but they provide this on their site unblocker. So, to solve CAPTCHA, you must rely on additional packages, third-party tools, or manual intervention, adding complexity, cost, and time to your scraping workflows.

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ScraperAPI vs Smartproxy: What's Different

To help you understand the differences between ScaperAPI and Smartproxy, here is the breakdown of their features and what makes ScraperAPI a better alternative.

FeaturesScraperAPI Smartproxy What this mean
CAPTCHA solvingBuilt-inRequires third-party toolsScraperAPI has a built-in CAPTCHA solving that ensures your data extraction goes smoothly at no additional cost.
Smartproxy has this feature, but it is an extra service you must purchase. This adds additional costs and complexity to your project.
JavaScript rendingBuilt-inSupported, but only for Advanced planBoth have JavaScript rendering, but ScraperAPI’s built-in JavaScript rendering has no additional cost or plan limitation. Smartproxy, on the other hand, only allows JavaScript rendering on its advanced plan and not its core plan, making it more expensive than ScraperAPI JavaScript rendering
Advanced ToolsIncluded with all plans at no extra costLimited to advanced plansWith every ScraperAPI plan, you get powerful tools like automatic CAPTCHA solving, JavaScript rendering, advanced proxy rotation, and the Data Pipeline for scheduling. These features are included at no extra cost, making the entire scraping process easier and more reliable.Smartproxy, on the other hand, does not include many of these tools in all its plans. For example, JavaScript rendering and structured data outputs are only available in more expensive plans, and CAPTCHA solving requires a separate product. This means you’ll need to do more setup and spend more money to get the same features ScraperAPI includes by default.
Data output formatJSON, CSV, Text, MarkdownLimited by planScraperAPI allows you to store your data easily and in different formats at no additional cost.
Smartproxy limits how you can store your data for smaller plans.
For example, Smartproxy e-commerce scraper only allows you to store ‘raw HTML’ when you pay for the core plan but allows for ‘HTML, JSON, Parsed’ storage for its advanced plan.

Enterprise Features Without the Price Tag

Dedicated Account Manager

Your account manager will be there any time your team needs a helping hand.

Professional support

Premium Support

Enterprise customers* get dedicated Slack channels for direct communication with engineers and support.

geolocation

100% Compliant

All data collected and provided to customers are ethically obtained and compliant with all applicable laws.

IP locatations

Global Data Coverage

Your account manager will be there any time your team needs a helping hand.

Integration tutorials

Powerful Scraping Tools

All our tools are designed to simplify the scraping process and collect mass-scale data without getting blocked.

Designed for Scale

Scale your data pipelines while keeping a near-perfect success rate.

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Simple, Powerful, Reliable Data Collection That Just Works

Web data collection doesn’t have to be complicated. With ScraperAPI, you can access the data you need without worrying about proxies, browsers, or CAPTCHA handling.

Our powerful scraping infrastructure handles the hard parts for you, delivering reliable results with success rates of nearly 99.99%.

Extract Clean, Structured Data from Any Website in Seconds

No more struggling with messy HTML and complex parsing. ScraperAPI transforms any website into clean, structured data formats you can immediately use.

 

Our structured data endpoints automatically convert popular sites like Amazon, Google, Walmart, and eBay into ready-to-use JSON or CSV, with no parsing required on your end.

 

Instead of spending hours writing custom parsers that break whenever websites change, get consistent, reliable data with a single API call.

EXPLORE STRUCTURED ENDPOINTS
Auto Parsing​

Test it yourself

Python
import requests

payload = {
    'api_key': 'YOUR_API_KEY',
    'url': 'https://www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-Unlocked-Smartphone-High-Res-Manufacturer/dp/B0DCLCPN9T/?th=1',
    'country': 'us',
    'output_format': 'text'
}


response = requests.get('https://api.scraperapi.com/', params=payload)
product_data = response.text

with open('product.text', 'w') as f:
    f.write(product_data)
    f.close()

Feed Your LLMs with Perfect Web Data, Zero Cleaning Required

Training AI models requires massive amounts of high-quality data. The problem is that web content is often too messy and unstructured for models to make sense of it.

 

ScraperAPI solves this with our output_format parameter. It automatically converts web pages into clean Text or Markdown formats, which is perfectly suited for LLM training.

 

Simply add "output_format=text" or "output_format=markdown" to your request, and we’ll strip away irrelevant elements while preserving the meaningful content your models need.

check output documentation

Collect Data at Scale Without Writing a Single Line of Code

Set up large-scale scraping jobs with our intuitive visual interface. All you have to do is:

 

  • Upload your target URLs
  • Choose your settings
  • Schedule when you want your data collected

DataPipeline handles everything from there: proxy rotation, CAPTCHA solving, retries, and delivering your data where you need it via webhooks or downloadable files.

 

Scale up to 10,000 URLs per project while our infrastructure manages the technical complexity, or use its dedicated endpoints to add even more control to your existing projects.

schedule scraping jobs
Data Pipeline
ScraperAPI geotargeting

See Websites Exactly as Local Users Do with Global Geotargetting

Many websites show different content based on where and how you’re accessing them, which limits your ability to collect comprehensive, quality data.

 

With ScraperAPI’s geotargeting capabilities, you can access websites from over 150 countries through our network of 150M+ proxies and see exactly what local users see.

 

Simply add a country_code parameter to your request, and ScraperAPI will automatically route your request through the appropriate location with no complex proxy setup required.

 

Uncover region-specific pricing, product availability, search results, and local content that would otherwise be invisible to your standard scraping setup.

discover all location

All the Data You Need. One Place to Find It

Automate your entire scraping project with us, or select a solution that fits your business goals.

Residential Proxies

Proxy Management

Integrate our proxy pool with your in-house scrapers or our Scraping API to unlock any website.

  • 40M+ IPs
  • 99.99% Uptime
  • Geotargeting
datapipeline.svg

Scraping Solutions

Easily scrape data, automate rendering, bypass obstacles, and parse product search results quickly and efficiently.

  • JS rendering
  • Smart IP Rotation
  • Amazon / Walmart Scraper
async-scraper-icon.svg

Hosted Scraper

Put ecommerce data collection on autopilot without writing a single line of code.

  • Visual interface
  • Built-in scheduler
  • Ready-to-use templates
FIND YOUR PERFECT SCRAPING SOLUTION

What Our Customers
Are Saying

One of the most frustrating parts of automated web scraping is constantly dealing with IP blocks and CAPTCHAs. ScraperAPI gets this task off of your shoulders.

Capterra Badge

based on 50+ reviews

The team at ScraperAPI was so patient in helping us debug our first scraper. Thanks for being super passionate and awesome!
Cristina Saavedra
Cristina SaavedraOptimization Director at SquareTrade
A dead simple API plus a generous free tier are hard to beat. ScraperAPI is a good example of how developer experience can make a difference in a crowded category.
Ilya Sukhar
Ilya SukharFounder of Parse, Partner at YCombinator
I researched a lot of scraping tools and am glad I found ScraperAPI. It has low cost and great tech support. They always respond within 24 hours when I need any help with the product.
Alexander Zharkov
Alexander ZharkovFullstack Javascript Developer
BigCommerce

Simple Pricing. No Surprises.

Start collecting data with our 7-day trial and 5,000 API credits. No credit card required.

Upgrade to enable more features and increase scraping volume.

Hobby

Ideal for small projects or personal use.

Hobby

$49

/ month

$44

/ month, billed annually

  • 100,000 API Credits
  • 20 Concurrent Threads
  • US & EU Geotargeting
Start Trial

Startup

Great for small teams and advanced users.

Startup

$149

/ month

$134

/ month, billed annually

  • 1,000,000 API Credits
  • 50 Concurrent Threads
  • US & EU Geotargeting
Start Trial

Business

Perfect for small-medium businesses.

Business

$299

/ month

$269

/ month, billed annually

  • 3,000,000 API Credits
  • 100 Concurrent Threads
  • All Geotargeting
Start Trial

Scaling

Most popular

Perfect for teams looking to scale their operations.

Business

$475

/ month

$427

/ month, billed annually

  • 5,000,000 API Credits
  • 200 Concurrent Threads
  • All Geotargeting
Start Trial

Enterprise

Need more than 5,000,000 API Credits with all premium features, premium support and an account manager?

  • 5,000,000+ API credits and 200+ Concurrent Threads
  • Dedicated Account Manager
  • Slack Support
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Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. ScraperAPI allows you to scrape significantly more pages for the same or at a lower cost. For example, at $299/month, ScraperAPI’s Business Plan lets you scrape over 600,000 eCommerce pages, while Smartproxy’s Advanced Plan at $300/month includes only 250,000 requests.

ScraperAPI includes automatic CAPTCHA solving in all plans by default. Smartproxy only offers CAPTCHA handling through its separate Site Unblocker product, which is not included with their standard scraping APIs — requiring an additional subscription

Switching to ScraperAPI is simple. Just replace Smartproxy’s API endpoint with ScraperAPI’s endpoint, and you’re ready to go. Our documentation and support team make the transition seamless.

5 Billion Requests Handled per Month

Get started with 5,000 free API credits or contact sales

Switch to ScraperAPI Today

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