If you're in B2B sales, venture capital research, or startup scouting, Crunchbase is the single richest source of company data on the internet. Funding rounds, employee counts, founder histories, acquisition timelines — it's all there.
But getting that data out at scale? That's where things get interesting.
Crunchbase's official API is expensive ($29/month for basic, enterprise pricing for bulk access), rate-limited, and missing many fields available on the public site. Most teams end up needing a scraper. Here's what's available in 2026 and how the options compare.
The Challenge: Why Crunchbase Is Hard to Scrape
Crunchbase isn't a simple HTML site. It's a heavily JavaScript-rendered single-page app with aggressive bot detection. Here's what makes it tricky:
- Datacenter IP blocking: Standard proxy services get blocked within minutes. You need residential proxies.
- Dynamic rendering: Content loads via JavaScript, so simple HTTP requests return empty shells.
- Rate limiting: Even with good proxies, hammering the site gets you blocked fast.
- Changing selectors: The DOM structure shifts regularly, breaking brittle scrapers.
If you're building a DIY solution, expect to spend days on proxy rotation, headless browser config, and ongoing maintenance.
Option 1: Crunchbase Official API
The path of least resistance — if your needs are small.
Pros:
- Clean, structured JSON responses
- Legal clarity (you're using their sanctioned API)
- Reliable uptime
Cons:
- Basic plan ($29/mo) caps at 200 requests/minute with limited fields
- Bulk export requires enterprise pricing ($$$$)
- Many useful fields (detailed funding rounds, employee history) are paywalled
- No batch mode — one company per request
Verdict: Fine for ad-hoc lookups. Impractical for building lead lists of 10K+ companies.
Option 2: DIY Scraper with Playwright/Puppeteer
The "roll your own" approach. You control everything.
Pros:
- Full flexibility over what data you extract
- No per-request costs beyond proxy fees
- Can grab fields the API doesn't expose
Cons:
- Weeks of development time for a robust solution
- Proxy costs add up (residential proxies run $5-15/GB)
- Maintenance burden as Crunchbase updates their site
- You need to handle retries, rate limiting, data cleaning
If you go this route, pair it with a proxy management service like ScrapeOps to handle rotation and avoid getting your IPs burned.
Option 3: Apify Crunchbase Scraper (Our Pick)
We built Crunchbase Scraper specifically to solve the pain points above.
What it does:
- Scrapes company profiles, funding rounds, people, and organization search results
- Uses residential proxy support out of the box (Crunchbase blocks datacenter IPs)
- No API key needed — scrapes public data directly
- Batch mode: feed it a list of 10,000 company URLs and walk away
- Outputs clean JSON, CSV, or pushes directly to your database
How it works:
- Set your search query or provide a list of Crunchbase URLs
- Choose what data you need (company overview, funding, people, etc.)
- Run it — the actor handles proxy rotation, retries, and rate limiting
- Export your dataset in any format
Pricing: Pay-per-result on Apify's platform. No monthly commitment. A typical run scraping 1,000 company profiles costs under $5.
Pros:
- Zero setup time — runs in the cloud
- Handles anti-bot measures automatically
- Residential proxies included
- Maintained and updated when Crunchbase changes
Cons:
- Less customizable than a DIY solution
- Dependent on Apify platform
Option 4: ProxyCrawl / ScraperAPI
These are proxy + rendering services, not dedicated scrapers. You still write the extraction logic, but they handle the proxy rotation and JavaScript rendering.
Pros:
- Handle the hardest part (proxies and rendering)
- Pay per successful request
- Work with any target site, not just Crunchbase
Cons:
- You still need to write and maintain parsing code
- Per-request pricing can get expensive at scale (typically $1-3 per 1,000 requests)
- No Crunchbase-specific optimizations
Head-to-Head Comparison
| Feature | Official API | DIY | Apify Actor | Proxy Services |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Setup time | Minutes | Weeks | Minutes | Hours |
| Cost (10K companies) | $$$$ | $$ (proxies) | $5-50 | $10-30 + dev time |
| Data completeness | Limited | Full | Full | Full (if coded) |
| Maintenance | None | High | None | Medium |
| Residential proxies | N/A | You manage | Included | Included |
| Batch mode | No | Custom | Yes | Custom |
Which Should You Choose?
- Small, occasional lookups → Official API
- Full control, have engineering time → DIY with quality proxies
- Need results now, at scale → Crunchbase Scraper on Apify
- Scraping multiple sites, not just Crunchbase → Proxy service + custom code
For most B2B sales and research teams, the Apify actor is the fastest path to usable data. No infrastructure to manage, no code to maintain, and the residential proxy support means you won't hit the wall that kills most DIY attempts.
The companies in your CRM won't enrich themselves. Pick a tool and start pulling data.
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