What Is ScrapeForge? — Complete Answer

ScrapeForge is SearchHive's web scraping API that extracts structured data from any website. It handles JavaScript rendering, proxy rotation, CAPTCHA bypass, and anti-bot detection automatically -- you send a URL and get clean content back. ScrapeForge is one of three core APIs in the SearchHive platform, alongside SwiftSearch (web search) and DeepDive (deep content extraction).

Key Takeaways

• ScrapeForge is SearchHive's managed web scraping API -- send a URL, get structured content
• It handles headless browser rendering, proxy rotation, and anti-bot detection automatically
• Pricing starts at free (500 credits) and scales to $199/month for 500K credits
• ScrapeForge integrates natively with SwiftSearch for search-then-scrape workflows
• It competes with Firecrawl, ScrapingBee, and ScrapeGraphAI but at a lower price point

What does ScrapeForge do?

ScrapeForge extracts data from web pages. You give it a URL, and it returns:

• Raw HTML. The fully rendered page content, including JavaScript-generated elements.
• Clean text. Stripped of navigation, footers, ads, and boilerplate.
• Structured data. free JSON formatter-formatted extraction of specific fields (titles, prices, descriptions, etc.) when you provide an extraction schema.

It handles the hard parts of web scraping that normally require significant infrastructure:

• JavaScript rendering. Pages built with React, Angular, Vue, or any SPA framework render fully before extraction.
• Proxy rotation. Requests are routed through a rotating pool of proxies to avoid IP-based blocking.
• Anti-bot bypass. ScrapeForge mimics real browser behavior to pass bot detection systems.
• CAPTCHA handling. Automated CAPTCHA solving for protected pages.
• Retry logic. Failed requests are retried automatically with different proxies and configurations.

How do I use ScrapeForge?

Basic scraping

Extract content from any URL with a single API call:

import requests

API_KEY = "your-searchhive-api-key"

response = requests.get(
    "https://api.searchhive.dev/scrape",
    params={
        "url": "https://example.com/products/123",
        "api_key": API_KEY
    }
)

data = response.json()
print(data["content"])

JSON extraction with a schema

Extract specific fields from a page:

import requests
import json

API_KEY = "your-searchhive-api-key"

schema = json.dumps({
    "fields": ["title", "price", "description", "availability"]
})

response = requests.get(
    "https://api.searchhive.dev/scrape",
    params={
        "url": "https://store.example.com/product/456",
        "schema": schema,
        "api_key": API_KEY
    }
)

data = response.json()
# Returns: {"title": "Widget Pro", "price": "$49.99", "description": "...", "availability": "In Stock"}
print(data)

Batch scraping

Scrape multiple URLs in parallel:

import requests
import concurrent.futures

API_KEY = "your-searchhive-api-key"

urls = [
    "https://example.com/page/1",
    "https://example.com/page/2",
    "https://example.com/page/3",
]

def scrape(url):
    resp = requests.get(
        "https://api.searchhive.dev/scrape",
        params={"url": url, "api_key": API_KEY}
    )
    return resp.json()

with concurrent.futures.ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=5) as executor:
    results = list(executor.map(scrape, urls))

for url, result in zip(urls, results):
    print(f"{url}: {len(result.get('content', ''))} chars")

How does ScrapeForge compare to alternatives?

ScrapeForge's main advantage: it is part of a unified platform. The same API key and credits work for search (SwiftSearch), scraping (ScrapeForge), and deep content extraction (DeepDive). With competitors, you typically need separate accounts and separate bills for each capability.

How much does ScrapeForge cost?

ScrapeForge uses SearchHive's universal credit system:

• Free plan: 500 credits (no credit card). Enough to scrape 100-500 pages depending on complexity.
• Starter ($9/mo): 5,000 credits. Good for small scripts and personal projects.
• Builder ($49/mo): 100,000 credits. Covers most production workloads up to 50K pages/month.
• Unicorn ($199/mo): 500,000 credits. For high-volume scraping operations.

Credit consumption varies by page complexity:

• Static HTML pages: 1-3 credits
• JavaScript-rendered pages: 5-15 credits
• Pages with heavy anti-bot protection: 10-25 credits

When should I use ScrapeForge vs. other SearchHive APIs?

SearchHive has three extraction APIs that serve different purposes:

• SwiftSearch. Use this when you need search results (titles, URLs, snippets). Think Google search as an API.
• ScrapeForge. Use this when you have a specific URL and need its content. Think "fetch this page and give me the data."
• DeepDive. Use this when you need the full, deep content of a page -- articles, documentation, long-form content. It extracts the main body text, stripping away navigation and boilerplate.

A common workflow: use SwiftSearch to find relevant URLs, then ScrapeForge or DeepDive to extract their content. /compare/firecrawl

Search-then-scrape workflow

import requests

API_KEY = "your-searchhive-api-key"

# Step 1: Search for relevant pages
search_resp = requests.get(
    "https://api.searchhive.dev/swift/search",
    params={"q": "best Python web scraping libraries 2026", "num": 5, "api_key": API_KEY}
).json()

# Step 2: Scrape each result
for result in search_resp.get("results", []):
    scrape_resp = requests.get(
        "https://api.searchhive.dev/scrape",
        params={"url": result["url"], "api_key": API_KEY}
    ).json()
    
    print(f"Title: {result['title']}")
    print(f"Content length: {len(scrape_resp.get('content', ''))} chars")
    print("---")

This pattern is the foundation of AI research agents, competitive monitoring tools, and automated content pipelines.

Who is ScrapeForge for?

• AI/ML developers building RAG systems that need fresh web data
• Data engineers building ETL pipelines that ingest web content
• Product teams monitoring competitor pricing, features, and reviews
• Researchers collecting data from academic sites, news sources, and public databases
• Agencies building automated reporting tools for clients

Getting started with ScrapeForge

Sign up at searchhive.dev for a free account with 500 credits. The API is REST-based -- no SDK required, works with any language. Full documentation is available in the SearchHive docs.

For more on how ScrapeForge fits into the SearchHive ecosystem, see our SearchHive API overview and our web scraping pricing comparison.