Anakin vs Scrape.do: the domains that quietly cost more

Scrape.do and Anakin agree on one good idea: you should pay for data you actually got, not for failed attempts. Both bill on success. Where they part ways is in how the cost of a single request is set, because on Scrape.do the same call can cost wildly different amounts depending on which site you point it at.

That pricing quirk is the lead, but it isn't the whole story. This compares the full surface: cost, data handling, identity, compliance, geo, and platform.

What Scrape.do does well

Scrape.do is a capable rotating-proxy and rendering API. Its pitch is "reliable, scalable, unstoppable web scraping," and the fundamentals are sound: one request, and it handles proxies, headers, CAPTCHAs, and JavaScript rendering (Scrape.do). The pricing is aggressive at the entry point, $29 a month for 250,000 successful calls, and the free tier gives 1,000 calls with no card (Scrape.do pricing).

The success-based billing is a genuine strength: you're charged only when a request returns a successful response with valid content, with no charge on timeouts, blocks, or errors (Scrape.do pricing). It also has an async job API with webhook delivery and Ready APIs that return parsed JSON for specific sites. For simple, high-volume scraping of ordinary pages, it's a good-value tool.

The per-domain surprise

The base costs look familiar. A normal request is 1 credit, rendering takes it to 5, residential proxies to 10, and residential plus rendering to 25 (Scrape.do request costs). That's the standard ladder. The part that catches people is the per-domain override list. Some sites carry a fixed, much higher cost regardless of your settings: LinkedIn is 30 credits, Shopee is 100, and Sainsbury's is 200 credits per request (Scrape.do request costs).

Those aren't edge cases, they're exactly the sites teams build scrapers for. A "250,000 credit" plan reads very differently once a chunk of your traffic is 30 or 100 or 200 credits a call. The authoritative cost comes back in a response header after the request runs, which is transparent, but it means the effective price of your workload depends on a lookup table that varies site by site.

How Anakin prices the same request

Anakin's URL Scraper charges 1 credit for a scrape, and JavaScript rendering carries no additional cost, billed "the same as basic" per the docs (Anakin pricing). The rate doesn't change based on which domain you target. A hard site and an easy site cost the same, because anti-detection and proxy routing across 207 countries are part of the base request rather than a per-domain surcharge.

# Submit the job
curl -X POST https://api.anakin.io/v1/url-scraper \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "https://example.com", "useBrowser": true}'
# -> { "jobId": "job_abc123xyz" }

# Poll until it's done
curl https://api.anakin.io/v1/url-scraper/job_abc123xyz \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY"
# -> { "status": "completed", ... }

Like Scrape.do, Anakin bills only on success, so failed jobs are free (Anakin quickstart). Structured JSON extraction is a flat 2 credits, and the free tier is 300 credits with no card.

The full comparison

Data management and output

Scrape.do returns raw HTML or Markdown, JSON via a `returnJSON` parameter, and screenshots, with an async job API that delivers to a `WebhookURL` and Ready APIs that hand back parsed JSON for Amazon, Google, eBay, and Walmart (Scrape.do docs). Anakin returns Markdown, an AI summary, or structured JSON, with a batch endpoint for up to 10 URLs in parallel and 24-hour caching where a repeat fetch costs zero credits (Anakin docs). The two are close; the difference is caching, which Scrape.do doesn't document, and which means Anakin never charges twice for the same page.

Identity, credentials, and compliance

For authenticated pages, Scrape.do offers sticky sessions via `sessionId`, custom cookies and headers, and a `playWithBrowser` mode that can run login steps, but no managed credential store and no documented 2FA (Scrape.do proxy mode). Anakin's Wire treats identity as managed infrastructure: named identities, credentials encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM and never returned by any endpoint, sourced from a vault you own like 1Password or Azure Key Vault (Anakin docs).

Compliance is a clearer gap. Scrape.do publishes no SOC 2, ISO 27001, or GDPR certification or trust page (Scrape.do). Anakin carries SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001:2022, and GDPR, with encryption in transit and at rest and documented incident notification (Anakin security). For a security review, that's a real difference.

Anti-bot, proxies, and geo

Scrape.do rotates a large proxy pool with residential coverage across 195+ countries via a `geoCode` parameter and regional targeting, backed by datacenter proxies in 34 (Scrape.do geo). That's strong geo coverage, comparable to Anakin's 207 countries. The difference stays the pricing model: on Scrape.do the residential-plus-render request that reaches those hard geos is 25 credits before any per-domain override, while on Anakin the same request is 1 credit. Concurrency runs 5 to 200 by plan on Scrape.do.

Past a single URL

Scrape.do is a request-per-URL scraping API; crawling and orchestration are on you. Anakin.io ships those as first-class tools on one credit balance:

• Crawl a site at 1 credit per page, or Map its URLs for 1 credit (Anakin pricing)
• Search the web with full-content extraction for 3 credits, or run an Agentic Search pipeline for 10 credits plus 1 per URL read
• Drive a stealth browser over CDP with Playwright or Puppeteer through the Browser API, with residential exits in 20+ countries
• Monitor a page, site, or Wire action on a schedule and diff the JSON it returns
• Call pre-built Wire endpoints for 940+ popular sites instead of scraping them

None of these change price based on the domain in the URL.

Developer experience

Scrape.do ships an official Node client, a handy HTTP proxy mode, and copy-paste examples across many languages, though its MCP support is third-party rather than official and there's no CLI (Scrape.do docs). Anakin ships Python, JavaScript, and Go SDKs, a CLI, and an official Anakin MCP server that hands an agent a Wire tool covering the whole catalog. For an agent-first build, first-party MCP is the sharper fit.

When Scrape.do is the right call

If your targets are mostly ordinary pages that sit at the 1-credit base rate, Scrape.do's entry pricing is hard to beat, and the success-based billing is exactly the right model. For high-volume scraping that stays clear of the expensive-domain list, it's a strong, cost-effective choice.

The math changes when your workload centers on the sites that carry heavy per-domain overrides, when you'd rather every request cost a known uniform amount, or when compliance certifications and a credential vault are on the checklist. That's where flat per-credit pricing and a fuller platform pull ahead.

The bottom line

Scrape.do gets success-based billing right, then reintroduces uncertainty through per-domain pricing that can reach 200 credits a call. Anakin.io charges 1 credit for a scrape on any domain, keeps JavaScript rendering free, bills only on success, adds caching, vault-backed identities, and SOC 2 plus ISO 27001, and puts crawl, search, and browser automation on the same balance. When the target shouldn't change the price, uniform pricing is the point.

Start on the free 300 credits at anakin.io and scrape the site you actually care about. It's 1 credit, whichever one it is.