What does Zatanna do?

Zatanna maps human-only software workflows and exposes them as reliable APIs. Instead of building brittle browser automation scripts, you show the task once and Zatanna reconstructs the underlying request flow into a stable endpoint your AI agents and internal tools can call in production.

How is Zatanna different from web scraping or RPA?

Traditional web scraping replays clicks and waits on page elements, which breaks whenever the UI changes. RPA tools automate screen-level interactions but require constant maintenance. Zatanna reconstructs the actual HTTP request behavior behind a workflow, producing a stable API that doesn't depend on the UI layer at all.

How does Zatanna handle anti-bot detection?

Zatanna manages TLS fingerprinting, proxy rotation, and detection-sensitive request behavior below the API layer. Sessions, cookies, retries, re-authentication, and error recovery are all handled automatically so your integration stays reliable.

What types of workflows does Zatanna support?

Zatanna works best for workflows that are important, repetitive, and stuck behind a UI — including back-office systems with no API, document and record workflows involving uploads, claim forms, and status checks, and AI agent actions in external third-party software.

How do I integrate with Zatanna?

Integration is a three-step process: (1) A human runs the workflow once while Zatanna observes the real behavior, (2) Zatanna builds a request model that reconstructs the calls, state transitions, and recovery logic, (3) Your systems call a single stable API endpoint while Zatanna manages the fragile workflow underneath.

← All articles2025-08-22 · 4 min read

ScraperAPI vs. ScrapingBee: Choosing the Right Scraping Proxy Service

ScraperAPI and ScrapingBee are the two most popular mid-range scraping services. Both handle proxies and CAPTCHAs, but they differ in JavaScript handling, pricing, and target use cases.

TL;DR

ScraperAPI and ScrapingBee both offer proxy-based scraping services at similar price points ($49/mo). ScraperAPI is the "just works" option with broad site coverage and strong auto-retry logic. ScrapingBee specializes in JavaScript-heavy sites and React-based content. Both are solid choices for data extraction — but neither handles authenticated workflow automation, which requires a different approach.

ScraperAPI strengths

ScraperAPI has earned its reputation for reliability:

Broad compatibility — handles most websites without configuration
Auto-retry and rotation — smart proxy selection that adapts when requests fail
Simple API — send a URL, get back HTML. Minimal configuration needed
Good documentation — clear examples and language-specific SDKs
Affordable scaling — pricing stays reasonable at higher volumes

ScrapingBee strengths

ScrapingBee carved out a niche with JavaScript-heavy sites:

JavaScript rendering — excellent at scraping React, Vue, and Angular applications
Custom JavaScript execution — run your own JS in the browser before extraction
Screenshot capability — useful for visual monitoring and debugging
Stealth mode — built-in browser fingerprint management
Google-specific features — dedicated search result scraping

What both do well

Both platforms abstract away the infrastructure of web scraping:

Proxy rotation across residential and datacenter IPs
CAPTCHA solving (basic and reCAPTCHA)
Browser rendering when needed
Geographic targeting
Reasonable pricing for mid-volume use cases

Where both stop

Neither ScraperAPI nor ScrapingBee is designed for workflow automation. They're data extraction services — you give them a URL, they return the page content. They don't handle:

Authenticated sessions (logging in, maintaining cookies across requests)
Multi-step workflows (form navigation, state management, sequential actions)
Action execution (submitting forms, uploading documents, processing transactions)

For these use cases, you need either browser automation (Tightrope, Playwright) or workflow API automation (Zatanna).

How to decide

Choose ScraperAPI if you want the simplest possible setup for general-purpose scraping. It handles the widest range of sites with minimal configuration.

Choose ScrapingBee if you're primarily scraping JavaScript-heavy single-page applications where rendering quality matters.

Choose a workflow API if you need to perform actions in authenticated systems, not just extract data from public pages.

The bottom line

ScraperAPI and ScrapingBee are both excellent at what they do — making web data extraction easy and reliable. The choice between them often comes down to whether your target sites are JavaScript-heavy (ScrapingBee) or not (ScraperAPI). When your needs go beyond data extraction into workflow execution, that's where a different tool category — like Zatanna — comes in.