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WebScraping.AI vs ZenRows (2026): which should you pick?

As of Nov 13, 2026, WebScraping.AI and ZenRows share a 2.4 GPA, both have a free plan, and ZenRows starts cheaper, at $16 a month against $29 a month.

Checked Oct 23, 2026 and Nov 13, 2026 · graded Oct 24, 2026 and Nov 13, 2026 by ToolGPA

WebScraping.AI 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.

WebScraping.AI

Scraping API with proxies, rendering and AI extraction

Free plan · from $29/mo
Full detailswebscraping.ai

ZenRows

Web scraping API for protected sites, priced by monthly credits

Free plan · from $16/mo
Full detailszenrows.com

Which one is for you

Pick WebScraping.AI if

  • Fits if you want rendering, proxies and extraction in one call
  • Works for small projects that fit inside 2,000 free credits a month

Look elsewhere if

  • Tight if you stay on Free: 2,000 credits is 400 rendered pages
  • Watch out: cost per request varies from 1 to 50 credits depending on proxy and rendering
  • Watch out: pay-as-you-go credits are only used after the monthly quota runs out
  • Watch out: geotargeting covers proxies in 13 countries, or you bring your own
  • Skip it if you want annual billing: only monthly prices were found

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

2.4GPAWebScraping.AIFair2.4GPAZenRowsFair
Value for money
CPersonal is $29 a month for 250,000 credits, which is the middle of the $19 to $49 range for data APIs. Residential and stealth requests burn credits at 10 to 50 each.
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
CA free plan with 2,000 credits a month, 2 concurrent connections and no card. Rendered pages cost 5 credits, so it stretches to a few hundred.
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
BRendering, proxies, AI question answering and extraction, a Google SERP endpoint and structured endpoints for YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram and more. Geotargeting covers 13 countries.
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
CNo store rating on record. SDKs in seven languages and Zapier, n8n and Make help, but you still wire up calls and pick credit-hungry options.
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 API with SDKs for Python, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, Go, Java and C#, plus Zapier, n8n, Make, Pipedream and Claude. No desktop or phone app.
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 forscraping with rendering and AI extractionscraping 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: WebScraping.AI and ZenRows. How we grade

Price against what you get

WebScraping.AI starts at $29 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.

WebScraping.AI scores higher, and starts $13 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 WebScraping.AI for less, and 1 scores higher than ZenRows for less.

Features, ease of use and platforms, averaged

D1.0C2.0B3.0A4.0Free$2$5$10$20$50$100$200$500$1kMore for lessCosts more, scores moreCosts less, scores lessCosts more, scores lessWebScraping.AIZenRows

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
The full chart of SERP and SEO data APIs, and the best at every price

Where they differ

    In commonFree planWebPublic APIAI featuresSERP API

    At a glance

    WebScraping.AIZenRows
    PricingFree planFree plan
    Starts at$29 per month for 250,000 credits$16 per month for 45,000 credits, billed annually ($19 billed monthly)
    Free plan2,000 API credits per month with up to 2 concurrent connections, no credit card required.5,000 credits a month with every tool except standalone residential proxies, 5 concurrent requests and community support. No card needed.
    Free trialNone listedNone listed
    Web
    Made byWebScraping.AIZenrows
    Price read fromwebscraping.aizenrows.com
    CheckedNov 13, 2026Oct 23, 2026

    Worth knowing

    WebScraping.AI

    • Credits are spent at different rates: 1 for a plain datacenter request, 5 with JS rendering, 10 to 25 for residential proxies and 50 for stealth.
    • Geotargeting covers proxies in 13 countries, or you can bring your own proxy.
    • Pay-as-you-go credits are only used after a subscription's monthly quota runs out.
    • The pricing section on the home page shows monthly prices only; no annual option was found.

    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

    WebScraping.AI

    Rendering and proxies
    Pages load in a Chrome browser with datacenter, residential or stealth proxies, and challenge pages are not charged.
    AI extraction
    Question answering, field extraction to JSON and summaries of page content, for 5 extra credits per request.
    Google SERP endpoint
    Returns parsed Google results as JSON for 15 credits per results page of 10 results.
    Structured scraper endpoints
    Parsed JSON for sites including YouTube, TikTok, X, LinkedIn, Instagram, Reddit and Indeed at 15 credits per page (50 for Reddit).
    SDKs and no-code connectors
    Official libraries for Python, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, Go, Java and C#, plus Zapier, n8n and Make.

    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

    WebScraping.AI

    • Free$0

      2,000 API credits per month and a maximum of 2 concurrent connections.

    • Personal$29

      per month for 250,000 credits, billed monthly

      10 concurrent requests and geotargeting.

    • Plus$99

      per month for 1,000,000 credits, billed monthly

      25 concurrent requests and geotargeting.

    • Startup$249

      per month for 3,000,000 credits, billed monthly

      50 concurrent requests and geotargeting.

    • Pay as you go$20

      one-time top-up, used as you go

      100,000 credits at $0.0002 each; credits stay valid for 12 months and top-ups extend the balance.

    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

    WebScraping.AI

    No public discounts listed.

    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, WebScraping.AI or ZenRows?

    As of Nov 13, 2026, ZenRows is cheaper to start with: $16 a month, against $29 a month for WebScraping.AI. WebScraping.AI starts at $29 per month for 250,000 credits, and ZenRows starts at $16 per month for 45,000 credits, billed annually ($19 billed monthly).

    Which has a free plan, WebScraping.AI or ZenRows?

    As of Nov 13, 2026, both WebScraping.AI and ZenRows have a free plan.

    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.
    How we review and grade