# ZenRows review (2026): is the free plan enough? > Web scraping API for protected sites, priced by monthly credits Checked Oct 23, 2026 ยท graded Oct 24, 2026 by ToolGPA. ZenRows is a web scraping platform whose tools all draw on one monthly credit balance: Fetch returns a page's content, Extract turns it into JSON without selectors, and Crawl, Batch and Browser handle whole sites, large jobs and pages that need clicks or logins. Search results are read by sending a Google or Bing results address to Fetch, localized to a country, and getting the result groups back as JSON. - **Category:** SERP & SEO Data APIs - **Made by:** Zenrows - **Website:** https://www.zenrows.com - **Runs on:** Web - **Who should skip it:** Skip it if you want a fixed SERP format, as the result groups vary with what Google or Bing shows. - **Facts last checked:** Oct 23, 2026 ## Pricing As of Oct 23, 2026, ZenRows has a free plan, and paid plans start at $16 per month for 45,000 credits, billed annually ($19 billed monthly). - **Pricing model:** Free plan - **Free plan:** 5,000 credits a month with every tool except standalone residential proxies, 5 concurrent requests and community support. No card needed. - **Free trial:** None listed. | Plan | Price | What you get | | --- | --- | --- | | 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). | | Enterprise | Custom | Committed volume, 500 to 1,000+ concurrent requests, an SLA, a DPA and a dedicated account manager. Through sales. | Read from https://www.zenrows.com/pricing on Oct 23, 2026. Prices change, so confirm with ZenRows before buying. ## Ways to pay less - **Two months free with annual billing** (Annual discount): 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. Source: https://www.zenrows.com/pricing ## Key features - **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. ## Good for - Developers scraping protected sites without managing proxies - AI agents that need web pages as Markdown or JSON - Small projects that fit in 5,000 free credits a month ## Worth knowing - 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). ## ToolGPA grades **GPA: 2.4 out of 4**, graded Oct 24, 2026. ZenRows fetches pages behind anti-bot walls and turns them into JSON without selectors, with crawl, batch and browser tools on the same monthly credits. For search data there's no dedicated endpoint: you send a Google or Bing results address and get back whatever groups that page shows, at 1 to 25 credits a request. - **Value for money: B.** Build 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: C.** A 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: C.** Fetch 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: C.** Judged 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: B.** Web, 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. These are ToolGPA's own grades. Graded from this listing, whose facts were read from ZenRows's own pages on 23 October 2026. Not based on using the product, and shorter than our full reviews. ## Where it stands among SERP and SEO data APIs - ZenRows's GPA of 2.4 is higher than 16 of the 38 other SERP and SEO data APIs we grade, and level with 14. - It stands best on value for money (B, above 21 of 38) and worst on ease of use (C, above 0). - Its paid plans start at $16 a month, against a middle price of $29.49 for the category: 2 of the 25 others that charge start lower. - On features, ease of use and platforms it scores 2.3 out of 4. 1 tool scores higher and costs less. The category's chart of price against score: https://toolgpa.com/charts/seo-data-apis ## Keep it, or make your own? **Keep it.** To replace ZenRows you would be making search results fetched at scale from many countries without being blocked. That is not a weekend's work, with an AI app builder or without one. It costs $192 a year. - You could not: Search results fetched at scale from many countries without being blocked. - You could not: It plugs into other products, Claude Code, Cursor and Clay among them, and has an API. - You could not: AI features, unless you pay a model provider for each request yourself. A judgement by ToolGPA from this listing, by rules that are the same for every tool. Nothing was built to test it. ## Works with Claude Code, Cursor, Clay, Make, n8n, Zapier, LangChain, LlamaIndex **Tags:** SERP API, Public API, AI features ## Alternatives - [ScrapingBee](https://toolgpa.com/tools/scrapingbee): Web scraping API with a Google search endpoint, priced by credits. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/scrapingbee-vs-zenrows) - [Scrapfly](https://toolgpa.com/tools/scrapfly): Web scraping API with anti-bot unblocking, browsers and AI extraction. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/scrapfly-vs-zenrows) - [ScraperAPI](https://toolgpa.com/tools/scraperapi): Web scraping API with Google search endpoints, priced in API credits. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/scraperapi-vs-zenrows) - [Scrape.do](https://toolgpa.com/tools/scrape-do): Web scraping API with ready-made Google and AI search scrapers. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/scrape-do-vs-zenrows) - [Zyte](https://toolgpa.com/tools/zyte): Web scraping API with ban handling, AI extraction and a SERP endpoint. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/zenrows-vs-zyte) ## Sources The prices, plans, platforms and features above were read from these pages on Oct 23, 2026: - https://www.zenrows.com/pricing - https://www.zenrows.com/ - https://docs.zenrows.com/academy/use-cases/search-engine-results.md - https://www.zenrows.com/integrations - https://www.zenrows.com/about Page: https://toolgpa.com/tools/zenrows Listed by ToolGPA (toolgpa.com).