What is the cheapest API that works on Indeed?

Sort the ranked table by cost per successful request and read down to the first provider still clearing Indeed this run. Lower priced APIs further down often fail too many requests for their sticker price to be meaningful.

Best Web Scraping APIs for Indeed: August 2026 Benchmark

Name: indeed.com Web Scraping API Benchmark
Creator: Scrapeway

Benchmarks run by the Scrapeway team · Last updated: August 28, 2026 · How we benchmark

Scrapfly is the best web scraping API for Indeed, with a 97% success rate across 8 web scraping APIs benchmarked against live Indeed pages in August 2026. 1 of the 8 cleared Indeed reliably enough to recommend.

Indeed is protected by Cloudflare plus its own proprietary layer of scraping defenses, so most scraping APIs either fail it or pay for it in speed and cost. The benchmark is refreshed twice a month, with no affiliate links and no sponsors.

Ranked by live Indeed success rate, best first:

🥇 Scrapfly: 97% success on Indeed
🥈 Scraperapi: 48% success on Indeed
🥉 Firecrawl: 46% success on Indeed

All 6 web scraping APIs for Indeed, ranked

#	Service	Success	Speed	Cost/1k		Code
1 🥇	Scrapfly	97%	28.0s	$7.82	(237) ★ 4.9	code
2 🥈	Scraperapi	48%	17.5s	$4.9	(62) ★ 4.6	code
3 🥉	Firecrawl	46%	5.8s	$6.61	n/a	code
4	WebScrapingAPI	44%	38.7s	$2.71	n/a	code
5	Scrapingbee	35%	2.0s	$3.21	(137) ★ 4.9	code
6	String	34%	32.2s	$0.4	n/a	code

Data range Aug 14 to Aug 28

Ranking history: web scraping APIs for Indeed over time

Indeed target ranking history

The 6 web scraping APIs for Indeed, reviewed

1. Scrapfly: 97% success on Indeed

On Indeed	Speed	Cost/1k	Overall	From
97%	28.0s	$7.82	#1 of 6	$30/mo

Indeed pairs Cloudflare with its own layer of scraping defenses in front of its search and job pages, and the job data sits in an embedded JSON object (the window.mosaic / _initialData state) rather than the visible HTML. Scrapfly cleared 97% here by generating a genuine browser fingerprint and clearing the Cloudflare challenge, so it reaches the rendered page and the embedded JSON instead of a challenge screen. Because it only bills for successful requests, the block and challenge pages Indeed returns don't quietly run up the cost.

At $7.82 per 1,000 successful requests and 28.0s average response time, the figures are strong for an API capable of clearing Cloudflare. The 97% success rate is the headline, and the ranking history above shows how that rate has held across previous runs.

Pros:

Highest success rate in the test, clearing Cloudflare's challenge and Indeed's own layer
Only charges for successful scrapes, so challenge pages cost nothing
One asp flag plus residential proxies handles Indeed with little tuning
First class SDKs for Python, TypeScript, Go, and Rust, plus a Scrapy extension

Cons:

Credit cost per request rises once ASP, JavaScript rendering, or residential proxies are enabled
The entry (Discovery) plan caps concurrency at 5, so large search crawls need a higher tier
The free tier is a single batch of 1,000 credits, enough to prototype but not to benchmark at volume

2. Scraperapi: 48% success on Indeed

On Indeed	Speed	Cost/1k	Overall	From
48%	17.5s	$4.90	#2 of 6	$49/mo

Scraperapi is built around a fast request path. When it clears a request it tends to return quickly, which suits latency sensitive lookups that can absorb retries. Indeed's Cloudflare layer and its own checks have to be cleared before the embedded job JSON is reachable, and the scorecard carries how it did on that this run. On Indeed it cleared 48% this run.

Pros:

Fast when it clears, with a simple integration
Broad language SDK support

Cons:

Login required flows and form filling are off limits
Geotargeting is gated by plan (US and EU only until the Business tier)

3. Firecrawl: 46% success on Indeed

On Indeed	Speed	Cost/1k	Overall	From
46%	5.8s	$6.61	#3 of 6	$16/mo

Firecrawl's draw on Indeed is its output format. It returns structured markdown rather than raw HTML, so a pipeline feeding an LLM or RAG system skips the parsing step on Indeed's job markup. Rendering a full browser on every page and generating that markdown carries a cost and latency premium over lighter, HTTP based options, so that saving has to be worth the premium for your use case. On Indeed it cleared 46% this run.

Pros:

Returns markdown built for LLM pipelines, saving a parsing step for AI and RAG pipelines
Runs a real browser, which covers pages that need JavaScript execution

Cons:

Cost is the top user complaint in reviews
Renders a full browser on every page, which adds latency

4. WebScrapingAPI: 44% success on Indeed

On Indeed	Speed	Cost/1k	Overall	From
44%	38.7s	$2.71	#4 of 6	$19/mo

WebScrapingAPI covers a broad range of language SDKs behind a simple REST interface, so it drops into most stacks without a client library, and it supports async and batch submission for queued jobs. The scorecard carries this run's speed and cost. On Indeed it cleared 44% this run.

Pros:

Broad language SDK range behind a simple REST interface
Async and batch submission for queued jobs

Cons:

Cloudflare's block pages are easy to keep paying for unless you check content
Support tickets often go unanswered for days, per user reviews

5. Scrapingbee: 35% success on Indeed

On Indeed	Speed	Cost/1k	Overall	From
35%	2.0s	$3.21	#5 of 6	$49/mo

Scrapingbee is fast and cheap per request, with JavaScript rendering for lighter targets. Indeed is a hard case for it, because Cloudflare's challenge has to be cleared in a real browser and Indeed's own layer scores the session, and every request that gets blocked partway through still costs credits. On Indeed it cleared 35% this run.

Pros:

Fast response times
Low sticker cost per request

Cons:

Cloudflare's challenge and Indeed's own layer penalize an HTTP first approach
Credits burn quickly once JavaScript rendering or premium proxies are enabled
No plan tier between the small and large options

6. String: 34% success on Indeed

On Indeed	Speed	Cost/1k	Overall	From
34%	32.2s	$0.40	#6 of 6	$20/mo

Indeed is where String's automatic strategy selection works against it. The service decides how hard to try per URL, and on Indeed it settles well below what it manages on retail and real-estate targets, clearing 34% this run. Because blocked requests are not billed, a low pass rate here costs you time rather than money, but it is not a target to plan around.

Pros:

Failed Indeed requests cost nothing, so a poor pass rate does not burn budget
Cheap enough per successful page that retrying is viable where it does clear

Cons:

Clears well under half of Indeed requests this run, too inconsistent for production job collection
No way to force a harder strategy, since the escalation decision is the service's to make
No official SDKs and no webhook support

COMPARISON

About scraping Indeed

Indeed is the largest job board on the web, and the data people scrape from it is mostly recruitment detail. That means job titles, hiring companies, locations, salary ranges where listed, posting dates, full job descriptions, apply links, and company ratings and reviews. Most of this lives on search results pages (the /jobs?q=...&l=... URLs) and on individual job detail pages.

Indeed renders its pages on the server but keeps the structured job data in an embedded JSON object rather than the visible markup. The reliable place to read it is the inline state (the window.mosaic / _initialData variable), which holds the search results and job records in one object, so parsing that JSON is cleaner than scraping individual DOM nodes. Search results paginate through the start URL parameter.

HTTP ANALYSIS

Indeed is protected by Cloudflare plus its own proprietary layer of scraping defenses. See the Cloudflare benchmark page for how Cloudflare detects bots. The practical detail for scraping Indeed is that its blocks and challenge pages can return without a hard error status, so success has to be measured on response content, not status codes.

indeed_scraper.py

import json
from parsel import Selector

# install using `pip install scrapfly-sdk`
from scrapfly import ScrapflyClient, ScrapeConfig, ScrapeApiResponse

# create an API client instance
client = ScrapflyClient(key="YOUR API KEY")

# create scrape function that returns HTML parser for a given URL
def scrape(url: str, country: str="", render_js=False, headers: dict=None) -> Selector:
    api_result = client.scrape(ScrapeConfig(
            url=url,
            headers=headers,
            asp=True,
            render_js=render_js or True,
            cache=False,
            cache_ttl=900,
            country=country or 'us',
            debug=True,
            method='GET',
    ))
    return api_result.selector

# example search page url:
url = "https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=python&l=Seattle%2C%20WA"
selector = scrape(url, country="US")

# Indeed jobs can be found in Javascript variable as an array of job objects:
data = selector.re(r'window.mosaic.providerData\["mosaic-provider-jobcards"\]=(\{.+?\});')
data = json.loads(data[0])
jobs = data["metaData"]["mosaicProviderJobCardsModel"]["results"]
print(len(jobs))
15
from pprint import pprint
pprint(jobs[0])