Make.com vs SearchHive for Web Scraping — No-Code Extraction Compared

Make.com (formerly Integromat) is one of the most popular no-code automation platforms, with over 3,000 app integrations and a visual scenario builder. But when it comes to web scraping, Make.com has significant limitations that become painful at scale. This article compares Make.com web scraping capabilities against SearchHive's purpose-built APIs, so you can decide which approach fits your data extraction needs.

Key Takeaways

• Make.com can do basic HTTP requests and HTML parsing through its HTTP module and tools, but it is not a dedicated web scraping platform
• Make.com pricing starts at $10.59/month (Core) for 10K operations, and each operation -- including HTTP requests -- consumes credits
• SearchHive's Builder plan at $49/month gives you 100K credits specifically optimized for scraping, search, and deep extraction
• Make.com's 5-minute execution cap on the Free plan and 40-minute cap on paid plans limit large scraping jobs
• SearchHive handles JavaScript rendering, proxy rotation, and CAPTCHA solving out of the box -- things Make.com requires custom workarounds for

Make.com Web Scraping: What You Actually Get

Make.com offers web scraping through a combination of modules:

• HTTP "Make a request" module -- send GET/POST requests, parse free JSON formatter/XML responses
• HTML "Extract from HTML" module -- parse HTML content using CSS selectors
• Built-in apps -- pre-built modules for platforms like LinkedIn, Google Sheets, and others that include some data extraction
• Code app -- run custom JavaScript or Python code for more complex scraping logic (costs 2 credits per second of execution)

These tools work fine for small, one-off extractions. The problems start when you need to scale, handle dynamic content, or extract data from JavaScript-heavy sites.

What Make.com Does Well for Scraping

• Visual workflow design -- drag-and-drop scenario builder is intuitive for non-developers
• 3,000+ integrations -- easy to pipe scraped data into Google Sheets, Slack, Airtable, databases, etc.
• Scheduling -- built-in scenario scheduling (minimum 15-minute intervals on Free, 1 minute on paid)
• Error handling -- built-in error routes and retry logic

Where Make.com Falls Short

• No headless browser rendering -- if a site requires JavaScript to load content, you need third-party APIs (like a separate scraping service) or custom code
• No proxy rotation -- Make.com runs on their infrastructure with their IPs. Scrape too aggressively and you get blocked. There is no built-in residential proxy pool
• No CAPTCHA solving -- you hit a CAPTCHA, your scenario stops. No automatic retry or solving mechanism
• Credit consumption -- HTTP requests and code execution both consume credits. A scraping-heavy workflow eats through your monthly allocation fast
• 5-minute execution limit (Free) -- the Free plan caps scenario runtime at 5 minutes. Paid plans give you 40 minutes, but large scraping jobs can still exceed this
• No structured data extraction -- you manually map CSS selectors or write parsing code. No AI-powered extraction

Make.com vs SearchHive: Feature Comparison

Pricing Breakdown

Make.com Pricing

• Free: $0/month -- 1,000 operations, 2 active scenarios, 5-minute max execution
• Core: $10.59/month -- 10,000 operations, unlimited scenarios, 40-minute execution
• Pro: $18.82/month -- 10,000 operations + priority execution
• Teams: $34.27/month -- 10,000 operations + team management
• Enterprise: Custom pricing -- unlimited scale, SSO, dedicated support

Every HTTP request, code execution step, and data transfer operation consumes credits. The Code app alone costs 2 credits per second of runtime. A scraping scenario that makes 500 HTTP requests and parses each response could easily consume 5,000-10,000 credits in a single run.

SearchHive Pricing

• Free: $0 -- 500 credits, full API access, all endpoints
• Starter: $9/month -- 5,000 credits ($0.0018/credit)
• Builder: $49/month -- 100,000 credits ($0.00049/credit)
• Unicorn: $199/month -- 500,000 credits ($0.000398/credit)
• Enterprise: Custom -- volume discounts, SLAs, dedicated infrastructure

1 credit = $0.0001. A typical ScrapeForge extraction costs 1-5 credits depending on page complexity. SwiftSearch (SERP) queries cost 2-5 credits. DeepDive (AI-powered extraction) costs 10-50 credits depending on depth.

At Builder plan rates, you can scrape roughly 20,000-100,000 pages per month depending on complexity. That is orders of magnitude more cost-effective than running equivalent HTTP requests through Make.com.

Code Examples

Make.com Web Scraping (HTTP Module Configuration)

Make.com's HTTP module requires visual configuration in their builder. Here is the equivalent as a concept:

Module: HTTP "Make a request"
  URL: https://example.com/products
  Method: GET
  Headers: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0

Module: HTML "Extract from HTML"
  Source: Output from HTTP module
  Selector: .product-card
  Fields: name, price, description

Module: Google Sheets "Add a Row"
  Values: Extracted fields

Each module execution consumes credits. For 1,000 product pages, that is at minimum 2,000 credit operations (HTTP + parse per page), often more with error retries.

SearchHive: Scrape the Same Data with One API Call

import requests

API_KEY = "your_searchhive_key"
headers = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {API_KEY}"}

# Scrape a product page with JS rendering
response = requests.post(
    "https://api.searchhive.dev/v1/scrape",
    headers=headers,
    json={
        "url": "https://example.com/products",
        "render_js": True,
        "extract": {
            "products": {
                "selector": ".product-card",
                "fields": ["name", "price", "description"]
            }
        }
    }
)

data = response.json()
for product in data["products"]:
    print(product["name"], product["price"])

SearchHive: Batch Scrape Multiple Pages

import requests

API_KEY = "your_searchhive_key"
headers = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {API_KEY}"}

urls = [
    f"https://example.com/products?page={i}"
    for i in range(1, 51)
]

for url in urls:
    response = requests.post(
        "https://api.searchhive.dev/v1/scrape",
        headers=headers,
        json={"url": url, "render_js": True}
    )
    print(f"Scraped {url}: {len(response.json().get('data', []))} items")

No execution time limits, no per-module credit consumption, no manual proxy management. Just send the request and get structured data back.

SearchHive: DeepDive for AI-Powered Extraction

When you need more than CSS selectors -- like extracting structured data from messy, inconsistent HTML -- DeepDive handles it:

import requests

API_KEY = "your_searchhive_key"
headers = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {API_KEY}"}

response = requests.post(
    "https://api.searchhive.dev/v1/deepdive",
    headers=headers,
    json={
        "url": "https://example.com/about",
        "prompt": "Extract company name, founding year, CEO, total funding raised, and headquarters location"
    }
)

data = response.json()
# Returns structured JSON with the requested fields
print(data)

Make.com has no equivalent. You would need to add an OpenAI or Anthropic module, write custom parsing, and handle errors yourself.

When to Use Make.com for Scraping

Make.com is the right choice when:

• You need a no-code visual builder and have no developers on the team
• Your scraping needs are small and simple -- a few dozen pages per day from static sites
• You want to connect scraped data directly to Make.com's 3,000+ integrations (Slack, Sheets, Airtable, etc.)
• You are already using Make.com for other automations and want to keep everything in one platform

When to Use SearchHive Instead

SearchHive is the better choice when:

• You need to scrape JavaScript-heavy sites (SPAs, React/Angular apps, infinite scroll)
• You are scraping at scale (hundreds or thousands of pages)
• You need proxy rotation and anti-bot bypass capabilities
• You want AI-powered extraction without wiring together multiple APIs
• Cost efficiency matters -- SearchHive's per-credit pricing beats Make.com's credit consumption for scraping-heavy workflows
• You need SERP scraping alongside web scraping -- SearchHive has both in one platform

You can also combine both: use SearchHive's API as the data source and Make.com as the orchestration layer. Make.com's HTTP module can call SearchHive endpoints, giving you the best of both worlds.

Verdict

Make.com is a solid automation platform, but web scraping is not its strength. It lacks essential scraping features (JS rendering, proxies, CAPTCHA handling) and its credit-based pricing makes data extraction expensive at scale. For anything beyond basic, low-volume scraping from static sites, SearchHive delivers more capability at a lower cost.

Start for free with 500 credits (no credit card required) and see how SearchHive compares. Our docs have complete API references and Python/JavaScript examples. If you are currently paying for Make.com plus a separate scraping API, you can likely consolidate both into SearchHive's Builder plan at $49/month.

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