Crawlbase vs ZenRows (2026): which should you pick?
As of Oct 24, 2026, Crawlbase and ZenRows share a 2.4 GPA, and only ZenRows has a free plan.
Checked Oct 23, 2026 · graded Oct 24, 2026 by ToolGPA
Crawlbase grades higher on features. ZenRows grades higher on value for money. They get the same grade on the free plan, ease of use and platforms.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Crawlbase
Crawling API with built-in scrapers, Google SERP to JSON included
ZenRows
Web scraping API for protected sites, priced by monthly credits
Which one is for you
Pick Crawlbase if
- Fits if your workload is uneven and suits pay as you go with a hard spending cap
- Works for developers who want Google, Bing and other sites as JSON from one API
Look elsewhere if
- Watch out: heavily defended sites cost 1.5 to 20 times a standard request, applied automatically
- Watch out: JavaScript rendering doubles any request, screenshots cost 2 credits and stored pages 0.5 credits a month
- Pricey if you want a subscription, which starts at $99 a month for 200,000 credits
- Tight if your usage swings, since a subscription's credits reset monthly and use past them is billed as you go unless you turn it off
Pick ZenRows if
- Fits if you scrape protected sites and want Google results from the same credits
- Works for AI agents that need web pages as Markdown or JSON
Look elsewhere if
- Skip it if you want a fixed SERP format, as the result groups vary with what Google or Bing shows
- Watch out: a page costs 1 credit plain, 5 rendered, 10 on premium proxies and 25 with both
- Watch out: residential bandwidth draws 25,000 credits per GB and the Browser 5 credits a minute
- Tight if you're on Free, which stops at 5,000 credits with no top-ups until the next month
- Pricey if your volume grows, as each plan's price steps up with its credit allowance
How we grade them
| 2.4GPACrawlbaseFair | 2.4GPAZenRowsFair | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | CPay as you go has no monthly fee and is billed per 1,000 requests, from $3.00 for the first 1,000 down to $0.02 at high volume. Subscriptions start at $99 a month for 200,000 credits, about $0.50 per 1,000, well above this category's $29.99 middle as a monthly bill. | BBuild is $16 a month on yearly billing, $19 monthly, inside this category's cheaper quarter, for 45,000 credits. A page is 1 credit plain and 25 with rendering and premium proxies, so that's 1,800 to 45,000 pages. |
| Free plan and trial | CNo free plan: 1,000 credits on sign-up with no card, rising to 5,000 after some setup steps. They're a one-off, not a monthly allowance. | CA free plan for good with no card: 5,000 credits a month with every tool except standalone residential proxies. At 25 credits for a rendered page on premium proxies that's 200 pages, and there are no top-ups. |
| Features | BGoogle results as JSON with organic results, ads, People Also Ask, the local pack and related searches, 100+ scrapers including Bing, DuckDuckGo and Yandex, JavaScript rendering, screenshots and an asynchronous crawler. Nothing in the listing shows a gap in the core job. | CFetch past anti-bot walls, Extract to JSON with no selectors, Crawl, Batch and a real Browser. The gap is in the listing: search results come from parsing a Google or Bing results page, so the groups returned vary with what the page shows. |
| Ease of use | CJudged on how fast a developer gets a first result: one API with built-in scrapers, and hard spending caps per account or workspace. No rating on record, and a request's cost changes with how defended the site is. | CJudged on how fast a developer gets a first result: Python, Node and Go SDKs, a CLI and an MCP server, all open source. No rating on record, and a request's cost changes with rendering and proxy choices. |
| Platforms and integrations | BWeb, with an API and a Web MCP server, plus Claude, Cursor, LangChain, Zapier and n8n. No desktop or phone app, so B is the top. | BWeb, with an API, SDKs, a CLI and an MCP server for Claude, Cursor and Codex, plus Clay, Make, n8n, Zapier, LangChain and LlamaIndex. No desktop or phone app, so B is the top. |
| Best for | Google results and other sites as JSON, pay as you go | scraping protected pages on one credit balance |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: Crawlbase and ZenRows. How we grade
Price against what you get
Crawlbase starts at $99 a month and scores 2.7 out of 4 on features, ease of use and platforms. ZenRows starts at $16 a month and scores 2.3.
Crawlbase scores higher, and starts $83 a month higher: the question is whether the extra is worth that to you. Of the other SERP and SEO data APIs on the chart, none scores higher than Crawlbase for less, and 1 scores higher than ZenRows for less.
Features, ease of use and platforms, averaged
What paid plans start at, a month (each step along is roughly double) →
- The best score at each price
- Has a free plan
- No free plan
Where they differ
At a glance
| Crawlbase | ZenRows | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free trial | Free plan |
| Starts at | $99 per month for 200,000 credits, billed monthly | $16 per month for 45,000 credits, billed annually ($19 billed monthly) |
| Free plan | None | 5,000 credits a month with every tool except standalone residential proxies, 5 concurrent requests and community support. No card needed. |
| Free trial | 1,000 free credits on sign-up, up to 5,000 after setup steps, no card needed | None listed |
| Web | ||
| Made by | Crawlbase LLC | Zenrows |
| Price read from | crawlbase.com | zenrows.com |
| Checked | Oct 23, 2026 | Oct 23, 2026 |
Worth knowing
Crawlbase
- Without a subscription, pay as you go has no monthly fee and is billed in arrears per 1,000 requests, falling from $3.00 for the first 1,000 to $0.02 at high volume.
- Heavily defended sites cost 1.5 to 20 times a standard request, applied automatically, and JavaScript rendering doubles any request.
- A subscription's credits reset each month; use past them is billed as pay as you go unless you turn that off.
- Screenshots cost 2 credits each and stored pages 0.5 credits a month.
ZenRows
- A standard page costs 1 credit, 5 with JavaScript rendering, 10 with premium proxies and 25 with both; residential bandwidth is 25,000 credits per GB.
- Search results come from fetching a Google or Bing results address and parsing the page, so the groups returned vary with what the page shows.
- The free plan stops at 5,000 credits until the next month; paid plans can buy top-ups up to ten times a billing period.
- Each paid plan's price rises with its credit allowance, in three steps (five for Scale).
Key features
Crawlbase
- Crawling API
- Fetches any page with rotating residential proxies, CAPTCHA and block handling included, optional JavaScript rendering in a real browser, and full-page screenshots.
- Google SERP Scraper
- Turns a Google search address into JSON with organic results, ads, People Also Ask, the local pack and related searches, at the same price as raw HTML.
- Built-in scrapers
- More than 100 scrapers return structured JSON from sites such as Amazon, Walmart, LinkedIn, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yandex and Tripadvisor.
- Enterprise Crawler
- Crawls asynchronously at scale and delivers the results to storage, for jobs too large to run request by request.
- Smart AI Proxy and Cloud Storage
- A single proxy endpoint that rotates residential IPs, and storage that keeps crawled pages for 0.5 credits a page a month.
- Spend caps and MCP server
- Set a hard spending cap on the account or a workspace, and give AI agents live web data through the Web MCP server.
ZenRows
- Fetch
- Returns any page as HTML, Markdown, JSON or a screenshot, getting past anti-bot walls, CAPTCHAs and fingerprint checks on protected sites.
- Extract
- Detects the data on a page and returns it as JSON with no selectors or schema to write. It currently costs nothing on top of the Fetch it uses.
- Search results as JSON
- Send a Google or Bing results address with a country and get organic results, related questions, videos and other groups back with their positions.
- Crawl and Batch
- Crawl collects every page behind a starting address, each billed as a Fetch; Batch runs large queued jobs with retries, webhooks and status tracking.
- Browser
- Drives a real browser for pages that need clicks, forms, logins or a session kept across a long job, billed at 5 credits a minute plus bandwidth.
- MCP server, CLI and SDKs
- An MCP server for Claude, Cursor and Codex, a command-line tool, and Python, Node and Go SDKs, all published as open source under MIT.
Plans
Crawlbase
Starter$99
per month for 200,000 credits, billed monthly
About $0.50 per 1,000 credits, or $1,089 a year with yearly billing. Use past the block continues as pay as you go.
Scale 500K$199
per month for 500,000 credits, billed monthly
About $0.40 per 1,000 credits, or $2,189 a year with yearly billing.
Scale 1M$349
per month for 1,000,000 credits, billed monthly
About $0.35 per 1,000 credits, or $3,839 a year with yearly billing.
Growth$599
per month for 2,000,000 credits, billed monthly
About $0.30 per 1,000 credits, or $6,589 a year with yearly billing.
EnterpriseCustom
Custom volume above 2 million credits a month, with SLAs and invoicing. Through sales.
ZenRows
Free$0
5,000 credits a month, refreshed monthly with no rollover or top-ups, 5 concurrent requests and community support.
Build$16
per month for 45,000 credits, billed annually ($19 billed monthly)
20 concurrent requests, email support and top-ups. Rises to $33 a month for 120,000 credits ($39 billed monthly).
Launch$58
per month for 250,000 credits, billed annually ($69 billed monthly)
50 concurrent requests and chat support. Rises to $108 a month for 700,000 credits ($129 billed monthly).
Growth$166
per month for 1.2M credits, billed annually ($199 billed monthly)
100 concurrent requests, priority support and the residential network at scale. Rises to $333 a month for 3M credits ($399 monthly).
Scale$458
per month for 5M credits, billed annually ($549 billed monthly)
200 to 400 concurrent requests and committed capacity options. Rises to $2,499 a month for 45M credits ($2,999 monthly).
EnterpriseCustom
Committed volume, 500 to 1,000+ concurrent requests, an SLA, a DPA and a dedicated account manager. Through sales.
Ways to pay less
Crawlbase
- Annual discount
One month free with yearly billing
Crawlbase's pricing page says yearly billing gives one month free, about 8% off: Starter is $1,089 a year instead of $99 a month.
ZenRows
- Annual discount
Two months free with annual billing
Zenrows says paying yearly gives two months free (pay for 10, get 12), shown as a 17% saving, with the year's credits up front.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, Crawlbase or ZenRows?
As of Oct 23, 2026, ZenRows is cheaper to start with: $16 a month, against $99 a month for Crawlbase. Crawlbase starts at $99 per month for 200,000 credits, billed monthly, and ZenRows starts at $16 per month for 45,000 credits, billed annually ($19 billed monthly).
Which has a free plan, Crawlbase or ZenRows?
As of Oct 23, 2026, only ZenRows has a free plan. Crawlbase does not, though it has a free trial.
More comparisons
How this page was made
- The verdict at the top follows a fixed rule. When both tools are in the same category and either is in our top three for it, the verdict follows that ranking: the higher-placed tool is our pick. The top three weigh who each tool suits as well as its grades, so a pick can go against the GPA. Otherwise the page does not pick one and says which grades higher: the higher GPA first; on a tie, the one with a free plan, then the one that starts cheaper in dollars a month, counted the same way for both; if they are still level, what the choice depends on.
- The grades are our own, from each tool’s review or report card. The GPA is their average.
- Prices, plans and platforms come from each tool’s listing. The table above says where each price was read and when.
- The differences and the answers to the questions are worked out from those listings.