Look, if you have a webpage, you're already providing it. If your webpage is of any use to anybody, someone is likely consuming it by scrapping. So if your dedicated API is harder and/or more expensive to provide and maintain than the degenerate API of your webpage's HTML, you're doing something wrong.
I'm not trying to win an argument. I'm trying to point to an obvious reference point for cost/effort behind an API that's handling the same data and interactions the webpage does.
i look forward to the folks making this argument telling their boss “it’s ok the HTML is an API that’s all we need to provide”
come on, nobody believes this when they’re not trying to win an argument on the internet