Best Web Scraping APIs to Bypass Cloudflare

Scrapfly is the best web scraping API for bypassing Cloudflare, with a 98% success rate across 8 web scraping APIs benchmarked against live Cloudflare-protected sites in June 2026. 3 of the 8 cleared Cloudflare at all, but only 2 held above 90%. Among those, the real gap comes down to speed and cost per successful request, not raw success.

Cloudflare is the most widely deployed anti-bot and CDN on the web, and most scraping APIs either fail its JavaScript challenges outright or pay for the bypass in speed and cost. The benchmark is open source and refreshed twice a month, with no affiliate links and no sponsors, so you can reproduce every number here yourself.

Quick verdict: the best web scraping API for Cloudflare

Scrapfly is the pick for Cloudflare. It ranked highest on the table at a 98% success , which gives more value compared to low priced service that bills you for failures. Of the 8 APIs tested, 3 cleared Cloudflare at all (50%+), but only 2 Scrapfly and Firecrawl stayed above 90%. The cheaper, faster options either traded away reliability or collapsed entirely, Scrapingant managed just 12%.

#	Service	Success	Speed	Cost/1k
1 🥇	Scrapfly	98%	5.4s	$6.51
2 🥈	Firecrawl	96%	8.1s	$6.56
3 🥉	WebScrapingAPI	68%	21.9s	$2.71

The web scraping APIs for Cloudflare, ranked

These are best scraping APIs against a Cloudflare-protected target, Indeed.com.

#	Service	Success	Speed	Cost/1k		Code
1 🥇	Scrapfly	98%	5.4s	$6.51	(237) ★ 4.9	code
2 🥈	Firecrawl	96%	8.1s	$6.56	—	code
3 🥉	WebScrapingAPI	68%	21.9s	$2.71	—	code
4	Scraperapi	41%	8.8s	$4.9	(62) ★ 4.6	code
5	Scrapingbee	35%	1.9s	$3.42	(137) ★ 4.9	code
6	Scrapingant	12%	19.7s	$1.9	—	code

Data range Jun 05 – Jun 19

Service specifications, explained

The ranking above sorts providers on success, speed, and cost. The specs below cover the capabilities that decide how each one fits your stack, language SDKs, JavaScript rendering, custom JS execution, sessions, and geotargeting, so you can match a provider to your setup without opening every feature page.

How the Cloudflare rankings have changed over time

Every benchmark re-ranks a service against the same live Cloudflare target, so a position change reflects a real shift in success, speed, and cost rather than a one-off run. Watch how the standings have moved across past benchmarks.

The 6 web scraping APIs for Cloudflare, reviewed

1. Scrapfly: 98% success on Cloudflare

Scrapfly cleared 98% of Cloudflare requests at $6.51 per 1,000 successful requests and averaged 5.4s per request. That is an uncommon combination, since most APIs that solve Cloudflare's JavaScript challenges pay for it in latency.

Consistency was the standout. It held its rate without challenge pages slipping through on retries. Few requests fail, so you rarely pay twice, and that keeps the cost per successful request low.

Pros:

• Highest success rate in the benchmark at 98%
• Cheapest cost per successful request among reliable providers at $6.51/1k
• Fastest reliable provider at 5.4s

Cons:

• Credits do not carry over month-to-month.
• No annual plans are available.

2. Firecrawl: 96% success on Cloudflare

Firecrawl cleared 96% of Cloudflare requests at $6.56 per 1,000 successful requests and averaged 8.1s per request. That is an uncommon combination, since most APIs that solve Cloudflare's JavaScript challenges pay for it in latency.

You are paying for LLM-ready markdown output, which is a real advantage for AI and RAG pipelines but hard to justify on cost alone if you only need raw HTML.

Pros:

• Reliably clears Cloudflare at 96%

Cons:

• Highest cost per successful request in the test at $6.56/1k
• Slowest reliable provider at 8.1s
• 4% of requests still fail, so expect some retries

3. WebScrapingAPI: 68% success on Cloudflare

WebScrapingAPI cleared 68% of Cloudflare requests at $2.71 per 1,000 successful requests and averaged 21.9s per request.

The trade off is speed, so the API suits batch and overnight jobs far better than latency-sensitive scraping work.

Pros:

• Does not charge for blocked requests.

Cons:

• Slow at 21.9s, better suited to batch than real-time work
• Clears only 67.8%, below the 90% bar and too inconsistent for production

4. Scraperapi: 41% success on Cloudflare

Scraperapi cleared just 41% of Cloudflare requests, failing roughly 6 in 10. If speed is your priority and you can absorb a small failure rate with retries, it is the most responsive API that still clears Cloudflare reliably.

5. Scrapingbee: 35% success on Cloudflare

Scrapingbee cleared just 35% of Cloudflare requests, failing roughly 6 in 10. That rate works for low-volume or best-effort scraping where retries are cheap. For production work that needs Cloudflare cleared on the first pass, it's simply too inconsistent.

6. Scrapingant: 12% success on Cloudflare

Scrapingant cleared just 12% of Cloudflare requests, failing roughly 9 in 10. We can't recommend it for Cloudflare-protected targets right now, and its low entry cost doesn't help when most requests never return data.

What makes Cloudflare hard to scrape

Cloudflare sits as a reverse proxy in front of the origin server, so every request is screened before it ever reaches the site. It scores requests on several signals at once, and a scraper has to look right on all of them.

The first is IP reputation. Datacenter ranges are flagged instantly, which is why scrapers that don't rotate through residential or mobile addresses get challenged before anything else loads.

The second is TLS and HTTP/2 fingerprinting. Cloudflare inspects the low-level handshake (cipher order, extensions, header order) to build a JA3/JA4 fingerprint. A plain HTTP client like requests or axios produces a signature no real browser would, so a mismatch gets you blocked no matter how clean the IP.

On top of that sit JavaScript challenges. Managed Challenge and Turnstile run browser-side proof-of-work and environment checks that a headless client either can't execute or runs in a detectably automated way.

Finally there are behavioral signals like mouse movement, timing, and navigation patterns. These flag sessions that act like a script rather than a person.

This is why most APIs in the ranking fail or score low. Clearing Cloudflare means getting the IP, the TLS fingerprint, the JavaScript execution, and the browser environment all consistent at once, getting any one wrong means the request is challenged. It also explains why the providers that do clear it tend to be slower or more expensive: solving the challenge costs real compute.

How to choose a web scraping API for Cloudflare

Match the choice to your constraint. If you need reliability above all, Cloudflare cleared on the first pass and at scale, Scrapfly leads at 98% and pairs it with the lowest cost per successful request, which makes it the default for production work.

If speed is what you're optimizing for, Scrapfly is the fastest reliable option at 5.4s with a manageable 98% success rate.

Avoid choosing on sticker price. The metric that matters on Cloudflare is cost per successful request. A cheap API that fails most requests has a far higher real cost per usable result, so judge providers on that rather than the headline rate.

How we benchmark web scraping APIs against Cloudflare

We independently benchmark 8 web scraping APIs against live Cloudflare-protected targets, 1,000+ requests per service, twice a month. No affiliate links. No sponsors. Just data.

Every API is tested against the same URLs concurrently, and cost is measured per 1,000 successful requests on entry-plan pricing. That way a cheap API that fails often scores worse than its sticker price suggests. These results cover Jun 05 – Jun 19, 2026.

Frequently asked questions about scraping Cloudflare

Can web scraping APIs reliably bypass Cloudflare in 2026?

Yes, the best ones do. In the latest benchmark, 3 of 8 APIs cleared Cloudflare at 50% or better, and 2 (Scrapfly and Firecrawl) held above 90%. The top-ranked API cleared 98% of requests. Reliability varies widely between providers, so the API matters more than the fact that it can be done.

What's the cheapest web scraping API that actually works on Cloudflare?

Scrapfly, at $6.51 per 1,000 successful requests with a 98% success rate, the lowest cost per successful request among the providers that clear Cloudflare reliably.

Why do some APIs score low on Cloudflare?

Because they send plain HTTP requests without solving Cloudflare's defenses. A client that doesn't match a real browser's TLS/HTTP-2 fingerprint, can't execute the JavaScript challenge (Managed Challenge or Turnstile), or uses flagged datacenter IPs gets blocked before any content loads.

Does bypassing Cloudflare require JavaScript rendering?

Usually, yes. Cloudflare's interactive challenges run browser-side, so an API needs a real browser engine to execute and pass them. The providers that clear Cloudflare reliably here all render JavaScript; the ones relying on raw HTTP requests are the ones that score lowest.

How often is this benchmark updated?

Twice a month. We re-run all 8 APIs against the same live targets, 1,000+ requests each, and republish the rankings. The benchmark is open source and carries no affiliate links or sponsors.

Conclusion

For Cloudflare-protected targets, Scrapfly is the API to beat: 98% success at a low cost per successful request, with only Firecrawl keeping pace on reliability.

The cheaper and faster options have their place, but on Cloudflare the decision comes down to cost per successful request. This page (refreshed twice a month) is the place to check it before you commit.

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