Quickstart

Make your first webscraperapi.ai API call in under 60 seconds.

Quickstart

Get your API key

Sign up at webscraperapi.ai and copy your API key from Settings.

Save it so you can use it in your shell:

export WEBSCRAPERAPI_API_KEY="wsa_sk_..."

Scrape a web page

Get the Hacker News front page as clean markdown:

curl -G "https://api.webscraperapi.ai/v1/scrape" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $WEBSCRAPERAPI_API_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "url=https://news.ycombinator.com" \
  --data-urlencode "output=markdown"
import os
import requests

response = requests.get(
  "https://api.webscraperapi.ai/v1/scrape",
  params={
    "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com",
    "output": "markdown",
  },
  headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['WEBSCRAPERAPI_API_KEY']}"},
)

print(response.text)
const params = new URLSearchParams({
  url: 'https://news.ycombinator.com',
  output: 'markdown',
});

const response = await fetch(
  `https://api.webscraperapi.ai/v1/scrape?${params}`,
  {
    headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.WEBSCRAPERAPI_API_KEY}` },
  }
);

console.log(await response.text());

Extract specific data with prompt

Instead of getting the full page, use prompt to ask a question. You get just the answer back — no parsing needed.

curl -G "https://api.webscraperapi.ai/v1/scrape" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $WEBSCRAPERAPI_API_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic" \
  --data-urlencode "prompt=When was Anthropic founded and who are the founders?"
import os
import requests

response = requests.get(
  "https://api.webscraperapi.ai/v1/scrape",
  params={
    "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic",
    "prompt": "When was Anthropic founded and who are the founders?",
  },
  headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['WEBSCRAPERAPI_API_KEY']}"},
)

print(response.text)

Alternative: MCP (one-command setup)

If you use Claude Code, Cursor, or Claude Desktop, you can connect via MCP instead of using API keys directly:

claude mcp add --transport http webscraperapi https://api.webscraperapi.ai/mcp

Then ask your agent to use webscraperapi tools. See MCP Quickstart for full setup.

Next steps