ChatGPT API Overview

Overview

The ScrapeBadger ChatGPT API sends a prompt to the real chatgpt.com — not the OpenAI API — and returns the answer as structured JSON, including the web sources ChatGPT actually browsed and cited. Requests are anonymous: no OpenAI account, no OpenAI API key, no billing relationship with OpenAI. You see what a logged-out user in your chosen country sees.

All endpoints live under https://scrapebadger.com/v1/chatgpt/* and authenticate with the X-API-Key header. /ask and /brand-visibility accept both GET (query params) and POST (JSON body). Credits are charged per request and reported on the X-Credits-Used response header.

Answers take 20-25s ungrounded, 30-70s with web search. This is a live browse of chatgpt.com, not a cached lookup — the clock includes ChatGPT composing the answer and, when it browses, running its own web search. Set your HTTP client timeout to 60 s or more; the default 5–10 s timeout in most SDKs will abort the call.

Features

Real ChatGPT answers — the full text as rendered on chatgpt.com, plus a Markdown variant when one is available.
Anchored citations — every citation carries start_index / end_index character offsets into answer and the matched_text it supports, so you can highlight exactly which sentence a source backs.
The full search trail — search_results is everything ChatGPT retrieved, each flagged cited: true/false. citations is the subset it actually referenced. Most APIs only give you the second list.
Did it really browse? — web_search_triggered tells you whether ChatGPT ran a web search or answered from its own weights. Force it with web_search=force, or suppress it with web_search=off.
Brand visibility (AEO/GEO) built in — one call returns mention counts, position score, share of voice against named competitors, and whether your domain was cited. No separate subscription.
Country control — country picks the egress country, so you can compare the answer a user in DE gets against the one in US.

Honesty caveat

Each request is a single, fresh, anonymous question. There is no conversation memory, no multi-turn follow-up, no model selection, no streaming, and no image input — conversation_id and message_id identify the one-shot exchange, they are not handles you can continue from. The model field reports which model answered; it is not a request parameter, and /models is a read-only catalogue of what chatgpt.com currently offers.ChatGPT is non-deterministic: the same prompt asked twice can produce different wording and different sources. For monitoring use cases, sample repeatedly and aggregate rather than trusting a single call.

Credits

Endpoint	Path	Credits
Ask	`GET`/`POST` `/v1/chatgpt/ask`	20
Brand visibility	`GET`/`POST` `/v1/chatgpt/brand-visibility`	25
List models	`GET /v1/chatgpt/models`	1
Health	`GET`/`HEAD` `/v1/chatgpt/health`	0

At the PAYG rate of

0.15 per 1K credits, an `/ask` call is **

0.003** — $3.00 per 1,000 answers. Subscription tiers cut that substantially. Non-2xx responses are never billed.

Quickstart

curl "https://scrapebadger.com/v1/chatgpt/ask?prompt=What%20are%20the%20best%20web%20scraping%20APIs%20in%202026%3F" \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  --max-time 60

const res = await fetch("https://scrapebadger.com/v1/chatgpt/ask", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    "X-API-Key": process.env.SCRAPEBADGER_API_KEY,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    prompt: "What are the best web scraping APIs in 2026?",
    country: "US",
    web_search: "force",
  }),
  signal: AbortSignal.timeout(60_000),
});
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data.answer);
console.log(data.source_domains);

import requests

res = requests.post(
    "https://scrapebadger.com/v1/chatgpt/ask",
    headers={"X-API-Key": "YOUR_API_KEY"},
    json={
        "prompt": "What are the best web scraping APIs in 2026?",
        "country": "US",
        "web_search": "force",
    },
    timeout=60,
)
data = res.json()
print(data["answer"])
print(data["source_domains"])

What you can build

AEO / GEO monitoring

Track whether ChatGPT names your brand for the prompts your buyers ask, how early it names you, and how you rank against competitors — with /brand-visibility.

Citation-source auditing

Find which domains ChatGPT trusts for a topic. search_results shows everything it retrieved; cited shows what survived into the answer.

Answer-quality research

Compare answers across countries, or with web_search forced on and off, to separate what ChatGPT knows from what it looked up.

Grounded content pipelines

Use start_index / end_index to attach a real source to each claim before republishing anything ChatGPT wrote.

How we compare

Vendor	Price / 1K	Citations	Full search trail	Brand analysis
Bright Data	$1.50	Yes	No	No
Apify `chatgpt-search`	$3.00	Yes	No	No
DataForSEO LLM Scraper	$1.20–4.00	Yes	Yes	Separate product
Scrapingdog	~30 credits/req	No	No	No
ScrapingBee	Credits	No	No	No
ScrapeBadger	$3.00 (20 cr)	Yes + text offsets	Yes	Bundled

Five things that are genuinely ours:

Citations anchored to the answer. start_index / end_index / matched_text tell you which sentence a source supports. No other vendor returns text offsets.
web_search_triggered. Only Bright Data otherwise tells you whether ChatGPT really browsed — everyone else leaves you guessing whether a citation-free answer came from memory or a failed search.
search_results vs citations. The retrieved set and the referenced subset. Only DataForSEO separates these.
Brand visibility in the same API. Profound, Otterly, Peec and AthenaHQ sell this as a $99–989/month subscription. Here it is a 25-credit call.
Published typically under 30s ungrounded live latency. DataForSEO’s live tier quotes a 90 s SLA.

FAQ

Is this the OpenAI API?

No. This drives the public chatgpt.com web interface as an anonymous visitor. You do not need an OpenAI account, an OpenAI API key, or an OpenAI subscription — and answers include web citations, which the OpenAI completions API does not return.

Why does a call take 20-25s ungrounded, 30-70s with web search?

Because a real answer is being generated, and when ChatGPT browses it runs its own web search first. Budget a 60 s client timeout and run calls concurrently rather than in a tight sequence.

Can I continue a conversation or ask a follow-up?

No. Every request is a fresh, standalone question with no memory of previous calls. Put all necessary context in the single prompt (up to 4,096 characters).

Can I choose which model answers?

No. /models lists the model slugs chatgpt.com currently exposes, and the model field in a response reports which one answered — but you cannot request a specific one.

I got an answer with no citations. Is that a bug?

Check web_search_triggered. If it is false, ChatGPT answered from its training data and there were no sources to cite — that is normal for general-knowledge prompts. Set web_search=force if you always want it to browse.

Will the same prompt always give the same answer?

No. ChatGPT is non-deterministic, and the live web changes. For tracking, sample the same prompt on a schedule and look at the trend, not a single result.

Does country change the answer?

It changes the egress country of the request, which affects the localised results ChatGPT retrieves and can change the answer’s emphasis and language. Pass any ISO-3166 alpha-2 code; the default is US.

What happens if a request fails?

You get {"detail": {"code": ..., "message": ...}} with an HTTP status of 422, 429 or 502 depending on the cause. Non-2xx responses are never billed, so a retry costs you nothing extra beyond the successful call.

Start with /ask to see the shape of a real answer, then move to /brand-visibility once you know which prompts matter for your market.

Overview

Ask

Brand Visibility

Reference

Overview

Features

Honesty caveat

Credits

Quickstart

What you can build

AEO / GEO monitoring

Citation-source auditing

Answer-quality research

Grounded content pipelines

How we compare

FAQ

​Overview

​Features

​Honesty caveat

​Credits

​Quickstart

​What you can build

AEO / GEO monitoring

Citation-source auditing

Answer-quality research

Grounded content pipelines

​How we compare

​FAQ

Overview

Features

Honesty caveat

Credits

Quickstart

What you can build

How we compare

FAQ