DocumentationAPI Credits

Credit Usage

ScrAPI uses a credit-based billing system. Each API call consumes credits based on the features you enable. Credits are additive - if you use multiple features in a single request, the total credits consumed is the sum of each feature’s cost.

No credits are consumed for failed requests that do not return any HTML or Markdown content.

Credit Cost Per Feature

FeatureCreditsDetails
No Browser (HTTP client)1Default - fastest and cheapest option.
Real Browser5Full headless browser with JavaScript execution.
Screenshot2PNG capture of the final rendered page.
PDF2PDF document of the final rendered page.
Video Recording3WEBM recording of all browser actions.
Residential Proxy10Premium proxy with wide geolocation support.
Data Center Proxy5Fast proxy with limited geolocation options.
Tor Proxy1Access .onion sites and anonymize traffic.
Captcha Solved30Per captcha solved (reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha, Cloudflare).

Free proxies and custom proxies do not consume additional credits.

Example Credit Calculations

ScenarioFeatures UsedTotal Credits
Simple HTTP scrapeHTTP client1
Browser scrape with screenshotBrowser (5) + Screenshot (2)7
Residential proxy with captcha solvingBrowser (5) + Residential (10) + 1 captcha (30)45
Full capture with data center proxyBrowser (5) + Data Center (5) + Screenshot (2) + PDF (2) + Video (3)17

Tips to Optimize Credit Usage

  • Skip the browser when possible. If the page doesn’t require JavaScript rendering, the default HTTP client costs just 1 credit. See Real Browser for guidance on when a browser is necessary.
  • Use data center proxies over residential when geolocation requirements are flexible - they cost half the credits.
  • Avoid enabling captcha solving unless needed. The detection process adds latency even when no captcha is present. Only enable solveCaptchas for sites known to present challenges.
  • Use sessions to persist captcha clearance cookies across requests, avoiding repeated captcha charges.

Checking Credits Used

The number of credits consumed by a request is returned in the creditsUsed field in JSON responses (the default format):

{
  "requestUrl": "https://www.deventerprise.com",
  "responseUrl": "https://deventerprise.com",
  "duration": "00:00:01.000000",
  "attempts": 1,
  "captchasSolved": {
    "reCaptchaV2": 1
  },
  "creditsUsed": 35,
  "statusCode": 200,
  "content": "<html>...</html>"
}

When using HTML or Markdown response formats, credits used are returned in the X-ScrAPI-CreditsUsed response header instead.

Checking Your Credit Balance

You can check your remaining credit balance at any time using the Credit Balance API. You can also view your balance and manage your subscription by logging into the subscriber area.

IntroductionGetting Started