Response format

The body

For a plain HTML fetch, the response body is the page: the same HTML the target served, after any rendering and unblocking we did on the way.

Site-specific modules return structured JSON instead of raw HTML. What is in it depends on the module.

Checking for success

An HTTP 200 from us means we completed the work. It does not, on its own, mean the target gave you what you wanted. A page can return 200 and contain a “temporarily unavailable” notice.

Assert on the content you actually need, not on the status code. If you are looking for a price, check that a price parsed.

Errors

Failures come back with a non-200 status and a message describing what went wrong. See Errors for the causes and which ones are worth retrying.

Billing

Each completed scrape draws from your balance regardless of what the page contained. A request we finished is a request we bill for, including one where the target returned a 404, because the fetching work happened either way.

Requests that fail on our side are not billed. Check Balance & usage if the numbers look off.

Note

If you are consuming a site-specific module, pin your parsing to the fields you actually read rather than to the shape of the whole object.