Trying to fix the web scraping industry's benchmark problem

In plain words

This is an open-source benchmark tool designed to evaluate web scraping companies with transparent, verifiable testing. Unlike existing benchmarks that use proprietary criteria and hand-picked websites, this tool publishes its full test harness, target list, and pass criteria on GitHub for anyone to inspect and run. It tests scraping performance across major anti-bot providers and multiple industries, with monthly maintenance updates. The tool is built for developers and procurement teams who need honest performance comparisons rather than vendor-supplied claims.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

Compare web access APIs (web unblockers / scrape APIs) head-to-head against a fixed suite of ~90 real-world, hard-to-scrape URLs - usestring/web-data-frontier-benchmark

In the maker’s words, at launch

We've been trying to evaluate web scraping companies, but when you look at their benchmarks, you can't verify anything, and they mostly exist to prove the company is successful. They put somewhere between 98% and 100% because they pick their own urls, define success their own way, and don't publish the harness. We…

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