ScrapeBox (scrapebox.com) is a desktop SEO program for Windows and Mac. It harvests search results, scrapes keyword suggestions, finds and tests free proxies, checks backlinks and posts blog comments. It is sold as a one-time licence for one computer. On 12 October 2026 the price was $97, shown as a limited-time cut from $197, and every yearly archive copy of its home page since October 2009 shows the same offer. It is still updated, most recently on 29 January 2026. Replacing it means replacing a job, and the table of jobs gives a priced alternative for each.
What ScrapeBox is and what it costs
Its home page calls it "The Swiss Army Knife of SEO!". Its core tools are a search engine harvester for "over 30 search engines", a keyword scraper that mines the suggestion boxes of search services, a proxy harvester and tester, a comment poster and a link checker. "Over 30 free addons" cover smaller jobs such as sitemaps, email extraction and video downloads.
What ScrapeBox costs, 12 October 2026
| Item | Price |
|---|---|
| Licence for one computer | $97 once |
| Licence transfer | One a month free, then $10 |
| Mac licence | A separate purchase |
| Premium plugin | $37 or $47 each |
| Plugin bundles | $97 for 5, $152 for 7 |
| Proxies | Not included |
| Email support | 12 months from purchase |
scrapebox.com home, FAQ, policy and plugins pages, read from our server on 12 October 2026
The licence is "for personal use" on "one (1) machine under a single operating system only", for life, and second-hand licences are refused. Money comes back only when the program cannot be made to run: after crash reports and work with support, "we will issue you a full refund within 14 days of purchase". In every other case the policy says "all sales are final", and a payment made by mistake, such as for the wrong system, costs a $10 fee to undo. Payment runs through PayPal, which also takes cards, and Bitcoin is accepted on request to support.
The $97 offer, 2009 to 2026
The domain was registered on 7 October 2009, and the archive's first copy of the site, eight days later, reads "For a Limited Time Grab ScrapeBox for $197 just $97". We read one copy for every year from 2009 to 2026, 18 in all, and each shows the same offer; "Hurry Discount Ends Soon!" stands beside it from January 2014.
The same copies date a new release in every year from 2017 to 2026, and the count of versions rose from "400 new versions" in 2013 to 600 in 2026. Version 2.0 arrived in 2015 as a free update, with full Unicode support and a 64-bit build. The public changelog stops at version 2.1.0.37 and sends readers to the program's update tool for later notes. Its heading names version 2.1.0.60, of 29 January 2026. Some text has not kept up: the home page still says "still going strong in 2023".
Windows and Mac
ScrapeBox runs on 64-bit Windows 10 and 11 and on Windows Server 2016 to 2025, and "It does not work on WINE". The Mac version is a separate licence, and a licence cannot move between the two. The FAQ disagrees with itself on Macs: one answer names "Apple Mac up to v15 Sequoia", another "up to v13 Ventura", adding that it "does not currently work on v14 Sonoma". Only three of the seven premium plugins, the email scraper, the expired domain finder and the Yellow Pages scraper, run on a Mac.
What changed at the search engines in 2025
In March 2025 ScrapeBox posted a notice on its contact page. Google now "requires javascript in order to obtain search results", it says, and this "effectively blocked all tools which do not use a web browser from accessing the service". It says a free update brought its search engine scraper, index checker and rank tracker back, and asks users to make sure they run version 2.1.53 before writing to support.
The engines' own search APIs closed the same year. Microsoft retired the Bing Search APIs on 11 August 2025, when "Any existing instances of Bing Search APIs will be decommissioned completely". Google's Custom Search JSON API "is closed to new customers", and its existing users have until 1 January 2027 to move. Bulk Google results now come from a tool that loads pages the way a browser does, or from a paid search API.
Google's rules matter for both routes. Its spam policies count "automated queries" sent without "express permission", including "scraping results for rank-checking purposes", as machine-generated traffic. They also name "Using automated programs or services to create links to your site" as link spam. ScrapeBox's own FAQ says its comment and trackback tools have been "used by many for not so white-hat activities".
Each job and what replaces it
ScrapeBox's jobs and their replacements, 12 October 2026
| Job | Replacement and price |
|---|---|
| Harvest Google results | DataForSEO, $0.60 per 1,000 result pages; SerpApi, 250 searches a month free, then $25 for 1,000 |
| Keyword suggestions | SerpApi's Google Autocomplete API, in the same plans |
| Crawl a site, check links | Screaming Frog, free up to 500 URLs, then £199 a year |
| Track rankings | SEO PowerSuite, free without saving, then €349 a year |
| Post links automatically | GSA Search Engine Ranker, $127 once, for Windows |
| Find and test proxies | A free proxy list and a proxy checker, or paid proxies |
The makers' price pages, read from our server on 12 October 2026
Most published lists of ScrapeBox alternatives hold search APIs alone. Bright Data's, updated in August 2026, names nine, its own first, and still calls one of them by its old name, Smartproxy. A search API replaces the harvester and nothing else.
Google results: a search API
DataForSEO bills each results page of up to 10 links. It charges $0.0006 in its standard queue, which aims to answer within 45 minutes, $0.0012 in the priority queue and $0.002 in live mode, which takes about six seconds. Place, language and device do not change the price, deeper pages cost the base price again, and the smallest top-up is $50, kept as a balance with no subscription.
SerpApi sells monthly plans that can be cancelled at any time: 250 searches free, 1,000 for $25, 5,000 for $75, 15,000 for $150 and 30,000 for $275. Only successful searches count against a plan, and each plan carries a guaranteed hourly rate and what SerpApi calls a "U.S. Legal Shield".
Site crawls and link checks: Screaming Frog or SEO PowerSuite
Screaming Frog's crawler is free up to 500 URLs a crawl. A licence costs £199 a year per user, falling to £169 each from 20 licences, and runs on Windows, macOS, Ubuntu and Fedora. SEO PowerSuite has a free version that works on one project without saving, crawls 500 URLs and tracks 1,100 backlinks. Its paid licences cost €349, €599 or €899 a year, with 20% off for two years and 34% for three. It runs on Windows, Mac and Linux, and its Rank Tracker covers the job of ScrapeBox's $37 rank-tracking plugin.
Automated posting: GSA Search Engine Ranker
GSA Search Engine Ranker costs $127 for a "Lifetime License" with "Free Lifetime Updates", and is a Windows program with a free trial. It finds sites, creates accounts, posts content and solves CAPTCHAs through more than 30 outside services. That is the job of ScrapeBox's comment poster, at a larger scale. Google's link spam rule above covers it in the same way.
Proxies, which every desktop tool needs
ScrapeBox's proxy page recommends two sellers of private proxies, MyPrivateProxy and IPFreelyProxies, and its FAQ names MyPrivateProxy.com as "our proxy supplier". On 12 October 2026 MyPrivateProxy charged $2.49 a month for one private proxy and $23.70 for ten, delivering eleven, down to $1.13 each at 2,000. ScrapeBox's coupon code takes 20% off every month. ScrapeBox added full SOCKS5 support in version 2.0.0.30, and its proxy manager tells HTTP and SOCKS proxies apart when it tests them.
Where HProxy fits
We sell proxies, the part ScrapeBox and GSA leave to you. A datacenter IPv4 address costs $1.58 per IP for a month and residential traffic $0.50 per GB, both over HTTP and SOCKS5. Our free proxy list is one of the public lists a proxy harvester can read, and our proxy checker tests any list. We have not run HProxy inside ScrapeBox.
Which one to pick
- Keep ScrapeBox if you own a licence and it still does your jobs: updates cost nothing.
- DataForSEO for Google results in bulk, at $0.60 per 1,000 pages.
- SerpApi to start free, with 250 searches a month.
- Screaming Frog for site crawls and link checks, free up to 500 URLs.
- SEO PowerSuite for rank tracking with a free version.
- Leave automated comment posting alone: Google counts links made by automated programs as link spam.
What we could not find out
We bought nothing and installed nothing, so we cannot say whether ScrapeBox's Google harvester works after its 2025 update, or how many proxies it needs to keep working. Its pages name no company, and the registry record names only its registrar. Notes on versions after 2.1.0.37 sit inside the program. Screaming Frog's page set the dollar price by script, so we give its pound price. We plan to read ScrapeBox's pages and these prices again by 12 January 2027.
Sources
- ScrapeBox: home, FAQ, policy, plugins, proxy and contact pages and the v2 changelog, read from our server on 12 October 2026; its home page in the Internet Archive, one copy a year from 15 October 2009 to 16 January 2026; the registry record of scrapebox.com.
- DataForSEO's Google Organic SERP API prices and pricing FAQ, SerpApi's plans, Screaming Frog's pricing, SEO PowerSuite's licences, GSA Search Engine Ranker's page and MyPrivateProxy's private proxy plans, read 12 October 2026.
- Google for Developers: the Custom Search JSON API overview (updated 18 February 2026) and Google Search's spam policies (updated 28 August 2026). Microsoft: the Bing Search APIs retirement notice.
- Bright Data's list of ScrapeBox alternatives and the ScrapeBox guides of Decodo, ProxyEmpire and ScraperAPI, read 12 October 2026.
- Keyword Planner's worldwide counts, taken 12 October 2026.
- HProxy's prices, taken from our live price data.
