ZenRows vs Zyte (2026): which should you pick?

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

Pick Zyte if

• Fits if you already write spiders in Scrapy and want them hosted next to the API
• Works for pulling up to 100 search results per call by country, language or city

Look elsewhere if

• Pricey if you want the lower rates, which need a commitment of at least $100 a month
• Watch out: Zyte puts each site in one of five price tiers and reviews them every quarter, so a request's cost can change
• Watch out: screenshots ($1.34 per 1,000), AI extraction ($0.27 to $1.07 per 1,000 per data type), actions and residential IPs all cost extra
• Tight if you're only testing, as the $5 credit covers the first month and the account is suspended once it's spent

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).

Zyte

• Without a commitment, pay as you go costs $0.13 to $1.27 per 1,000 HTTP responses and $1.01 to $16.08 per 1,000 rendered ones, up to $100 a month.
• Each site sits in one of five price tiers that Zyte assigns and reviews quarterly, so the cost of a request depends on the site.
• Screenshots ($1.34 per 1,000), automatic extraction ($0.27 to $1.07 per 1,000 per data type), actions and residential IPs cost extra.
• When the $5 free credit runs out, the account is suspended until a spending limit is set.

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.

Zyte

Automatic ban handling

Zyte API chooses between datacenter and residential IPs and browser rendering for each site, solves CAPTCHAs and rotates IPs, and charges only for successful responses.

Browser rendering and actions

Render JavaScript in a headless browser, script clicks, form fills and navigation, keep sessions, take screenshots and download files of up to 100MB.

AI extraction

Automatic extraction returns product, article, job and other page types as JSON; custom attributes let you describe extra fields, billed by AI tokens.

Search results endpoint

Returns up to 100 organic results in one call, with AI Overview content and country, language or city targeting. Pages 2 to 10 cost about 29% less than page 1.

Scrapy Cloud

Hosting for Scrapy spiders: a free low-resource unit with 1-hour jobs and 7 days of data, or $9 a month per unit for unlimited run time and 120 days.

Zyte MCP

A remote MCP server lets agents such as Claude Code, Codex CLI, GitHub Copilot CLI and VS Code fetch pages, extract data and run crawls.

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.

Zyte

• Standard, $100 commitment$100

  per month minimum commitment

  $0.10 to $0.95 per 1,000 HTTP responses and $0.75 to $12.00 per 1,000 browser-rendered ones, by site tier. Search first pages $0.63 per 1,000.

• Standard, $200 commitment$200

  per month minimum commitment

  $0.08 to $0.76 per 1,000 HTTP responses and $0.60 to $9.60 per 1,000 browser-rendered ones. Search first pages $0.51 per 1,000.

• Standard, $500 commitment$500

  per month minimum commitment

  $0.06 to $0.61 per 1,000 HTTP responses and $0.48 to $7.68 per 1,000 browser-rendered ones. Search first pages $0.40 per 1,000.

• EnterpriseCustom

  Larger volume discounts, $200 of free credit, 10,000 requests a minute, onboarding engineers and 24/7 support with SLAs. Through sales.

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.

Zyte

• Education

  Free Scrapy Cloud unit for students

  Zyte's Scrapy Cloud pricing page says students get the benefits of one purchased unit, normally $9 a month, for free.