How ScrapingBee Bootstrapped a $1M ARR Web Scraping API SaaS

Introduction

When Kevin Sahin and Pierre de Wouf set out to build a reliable scraping solution, they didn’t imagine reaching $1 million in annual recurring revenue without raising venture capital. After testing multiple side projects, they found that the real demand was a simple, developer-friendly Web Scraping API. They moved fast, asked for early payments, and doubled down on content to attract qualified leads.

Early Products and Lessons

Their first product, a price monitoring browser extension called ShopToList, couldn’t find a scalable way to monetize. They sold it to an agency and learned a hard lesson: even if a tool attracts users, it needs a clear path to revenue. When they built PricingBot next, it failed to gain traction because the market wasn’t ready to pay for that specific feature set. Pivoting quickly helped them find the right problem.

Pivot to a Web Scraping API

Recognizing that existing scraping tools were slow, unreliable, and opaque about proxy management, Kevin and Pierre launched ScrapingBee in April 2019. They stood up a lean MVP in weeks and recruited friends from forums as beta testers. Asking for payment just weeks after the MVP launch proved there was real demand: their first paid user signed up within an hour of their email.

Content-Driven Acquisition

Content became their main engine for growth. Kevin wrote detailed guides like “Web scraping without getting blocked,” which drove 20,000 visitors in the first week and eventually reached over 70,000 reads. They experimented with other channels, lost focus, then refocused entirely on blog posts, tutorials in multiple languages, and in-depth case studies to rank in search and attract developers.

Accelerator Boost & First MRR Milestone

In May 2020, they joined TinySeed. The funding and mentorship gave them runway to refine the product and user experience. By November 2020—18 months after launch—they hit $10,000 in monthly recurring revenue and became profitable. From there, growth accelerated: $20k MRR in three months backed by sustained content output and product improvements.

Scaling to $1M ARR

Throughout 2021, Kevin focused on marketing while Pierre improved the API and dashboard. They crossed 1 million organic pageviews by March, reinforcing that content was working. In November 2021—2.5 years after launch—they hit $1,000,000 ARR. They made their first hire in business development and rolled out a redesigned site in early 2022, laying the groundwork for analytics features next.

Takeaways

ScrapingBee’s journey shows that finding the right niche problem, validating with paid users early, and using consistent high-quality content can drive sustainable SaaS growth without external investors.