Irmu vs ScraperAPI
Structured e-commerce endpoints and no-code pipelines versus a general access layer.
ScraperAPI's strongest card is breadth of ready-made structured endpoints. Amazon product, search and offers, eBay, Walmart and more, each available synchronously or through a separate async job API, plus DataPipeline for scheduling up to 10,000 URLs without writing code. As of July 2026 DataPipeline bills on the same credit schedule as the standard API.
The cost of that breadth is that credits per request vary by domain and mode in ways the pricing page does not fully itemise — a Google SERP request, for example, costs materially more than a plain fetch. You can find the schedule in the docs, but you should read it before modelling spend.
Irmu takes the opposite position: one published credit table that this site syncs daily from the live API, four fetch modes, and a browser plus proxy port for anything the fetch endpoint cannot handle alone. Fewer pre-built parsers, more predictable arithmetic.
What each one costs
Public list pricing, checked on 29 August 2026. Vendors change plans often — verify on their pricing page before you commit.
Irmu
$40 / month — 200,000 credits
Credits, one ledger for every API. Plain fetch is 1 credit, JavaScript rendering 5, premium residential 10, premium plus rendering 25, an AI extraction query 5, and geotargeting by country, region or city is free. A response from the target — including 404, 500 or an anti-bot block — is a successful request and is billed. Requests Irmu cannot serve for its own internal reasons, or to domains outside coverage such as .gov, are not billed.
ScraperAPI
$49 / month (Hobby) — 100,000 API credits, 20 concurrent threads
API credits, with the cost per request varying by target domain and by mode across Default, Premium, Ultra Premium and JS Rendering tiers. Some targets, such as Google SERP requests, consume substantially more credits than a plain fetch.
- ScraperAPI's Hobby plan is $49 for 100,000 credits with 20 concurrent threads; Irmu's Lite plan is $40 for 200,000 credits with 5 concurrent requests. If concurrency is your bottleneck rather than volume, that trade runs in ScraperAPI's favour.
- ScraperAPI advertises both a 7-day 5,000-credit trial and an ongoing 1,000-credit free plan with 5 concurrent connections; the messaging varies by page. Irmu's free plan is 200 credits a month with one concurrent request.
- ScraperAPI's failed-request billing policy was not stated on the pages we checked. Irmu's is explicit: only Irmu-side failures and uncovered domains go unbilled.
Side by side
| Capability | Irmu | ScraperAPI |
|---|---|---|
| Entry paid plan | $40 — 200,000 credits | $49 — 100,000 credits |
| Concurrency on entry plan | 5 concurrent requests | 20 concurrent threads |
| Structured e-commerce endpoints | AI extraction on any page, 5 credits per query | Amazon, eBay, Walmart and more, sync and async |
| Scheduled no-code jobs | Batch endpoint with webhook delivery | DataPipeline, up to 10,000 URLs |
| Scriptable remote browser | Browser endpoint for multi-step flows | Not published as a first-party endpoint |
| Credit table transparency | Published and synced daily on this site | Documented, varies by domain and mode |
| Geotargeting | Country, region and city at no extra cost | Geotargeting on higher proxy tiers |
| HTTP proxy port | proxy.irmu.com:8080 | Proxy mode available |
Which one fits your job
Choose ScraperAPI when
- You scrape Amazon, eBay or Walmart at volume and want maintained JSON rather than your own parsers.
- Concurrency is your constraint — 20 threads on a $49 plan is hard to beat.
- You want scheduled jobs configured in a UI rather than in your own scheduler.
- Async submission and collection fits your architecture better than synchronous calls.
Choose Irmu when
- You want one credit table you can reason about, published and versioned rather than per-domain.
- Your targets are arbitrary sites, not the big marketplaces someone has already modelled.
- You need a browser session, screenshots and a proxy port drawing on the same quota.
- City-level geotargeting is part of the data requirement and you do not want it tier-gated.
What ScraperAPI does well
- Wide catalogue of structured e-commerce endpoints
- Async job API for large batches
- DataPipeline scheduling without code
- High concurrency even on the entry plan
ScraperAPI wins on marketplace parsers, concurrency per dollar and no-code scheduling. Irmu wins on predictable credit arithmetic, browser control and coverage of targets nobody has pre-modelled.
The same request, both ways
ScraperAPI and Irmu both accept the URL and options as query parameters against a single endpoint.
ScraperAPI
import requests
r = requests.get(
"https://api.scraperapi.com",
params={
"api_key": SCRAPERAPI_KEY,
"url": "https://example.com/product/42",
"render": "true",
"premium": "true",
"country_code": "us",
},
timeout=90,
)
html = r.textIrmu
import requests
r = requests.get(
"https://app.irmu.com/api/scrape",
params={
"api_key": IRMU_KEY,
"url": "https://example.com/product/42",
"render_js": "true",
"premium": "true",
"country": "us",
},
timeout=90,
)
r.raise_for_status()
html = r.textSwitching questions
Other comparisons
Irmu vs Firecrawl
Agent-ready markdown and crawling versus a full fetch, browser, screenshot and proxy stack.
Irmu vs ScrapingBee
A closely matched credit model — the difference is browser control and the proxy port.
Irmu vs ScrapingDog
Similar entry pricing — the split is dedicated site scrapers versus general-purpose access.
Irmu vs ZenRows
Two similar credit-based platforms — the difference is agent tooling versus browser and proxy depth.
Irmu vs Bright Data
The largest proxy network in the market versus a simpler, credit-priced access layer.
Irmu vs Apify
A marketplace of pre-built Actors versus a direct API you call from your own code.
Irmu vs Oxylabs
Per-target enterprise pricing and strict pay-for-success versus a single credit ledger.
Try Irmu alongside ScraperAPI
200 free credits every month, no card required — benchmark on your own targets.