ZenRows vs ScraperAPI Pricing per Page

ZenRows and ScraperAPI get shortlisted together because they sell the same product to the same buyer: a proxy-backed scraping API that takes a URL, gets past the blocking and hands back the page. Both meter it in credits on a monthly plan, and both multiply the credit cost by what the request needs. The multipliers are close enough to look identical on a quick read and different enough to move a monthly bill by $50 to $400.

Both vendors also publish comparison pages that reach opposite conclusions, each picking the workload that flatters it. This post does the arithmetic on neutral ground. Every figure below was read on 22 October 2026 from zenrows.com/pricing and the ZenRows billing documentation, and from scraperapi.com/pricing and the ScraperAPI credits documentation.

ZenRows vs ScraperAPI pricing at a glance

Cost per 1,000 pages on each plan

The credit table only becomes a price once you divide the plan by the multiplier. Here is that division at monthly list prices, for the request types that make up most real workloads. The figures are our arithmetic, not numbers either vendor publishes.

Read the middle column first. At almost any spend, a rendered page is cheaper on ZenRows: $0.99 per 1,000 on the $99 Launch rung against $1.49 on ScraperAPI Startup at $149, and $0.55 on Scale against $0.95 on Scaling. Then read the last column, which goes the other way above $150. The two vendors charge the same 25 credits for rendering plus premium proxies, so the cheaper credit wins, and ScraperAPI sells its credits in bigger buckets.

Five monthly workloads priced on each

Plans come in fixed sizes, so the cheapest option is whichever plan first holds your credits. These five workloads cover the common shapes of a proxy API bill.

100,000 plain HTML pages a month

ZenRows, by $10. Server-rendered pages are 1 credit on both, so you need 100,000 credits. On ZenRows that fits the $39 Build rung with 120,000 credits. On ScraperAPI it is exactly the $49 Hobby plan. Grow to a million plain pages and the order flips: ScraperAPI Startup holds them for $149, while ZenRows needs the $199 Growth rung.

100,000 JavaScript-rendered pages a month

ZenRows, by $50. At 5 credits a page you need 500,000 credits, which is the $99 Launch rung. ScraperAPI charges 10 a page, so you need 1,000,000 credits, which is the $149 Startup plan. This is the workload where the render multiplier matters most, and most modern product pages, dashboards and listing sites fall into it.

50,000 rendered pages behind premium proxies

Close to a tie. At 25 credits a page that is 1,250,000 credits. ZenRows Growth at $199 holds 1,200,000, just short, so you buy the $279 rung. ScraperAPI Business at $299 holds 3,000,000, which leaves room to retry. If your targets sit behind Cloudflare or DataDome, ScraperAPI adds 10 credits a page and you use 1,750,000 of them, still on the same $299 plan.

200,000 Amazon product pages a month

ScraperAPI, clearly. It bills Amazon, Walmart and eBay at a flat 5 credits, so 200,000 pages is 1,000,000 credits on the $149 Startup plan. ZenRows has no per-domain rate, so you pay for the request type the site needs. With premium proxies and rendering that is 5,000,000 credits on the $549 Scale rung, and even premium proxies alone is 2,000,000 credits at $279. If retail sites are the job, the named-domain rate is the cheapest line on either price list.

1,000,000 rendered pages a month

ZenRows, by about $425. You need 5,000,000 credits, which is ZenRows Scale at $549. On ScraperAPI it is 10,000,000 credits, the $975 Professional plan. Billed yearly the gap narrows a little because ZenRows discounts more, $458 a month against $877.50, but it does not close.

The billing rules that change the real bill

The multipliers get the attention, but three rules decide how far the monthly number drifts from your estimate.

Dead URLs are billed on both. ZenRows counts 404 and 410 responses as successful and charges for them. ScraperAPI charges for 200 and 404. A product catalog where 15 percent of the stored URLs have been delisted therefore costs 15 percent more than the page count suggests on either vendor, and the dataset fills with empty rows that look like normal results. That is the kind of silent drift a team catches by monitoring the volume and freshness of the scraped dataset, not by reading the invoice. Prune dead URLs before a big run.

Credits expire. ZenRows plan credits expire at renewal, and top-up credits roll forward once. ScraperAPI credits do not roll over either. Neither vendor rewards buying a bigger bucket for a quiet month, so size the plan to your steady workload and handle spikes separately.

Cancelled requests cost money on ScraperAPI. A request you cancel before 70 seconds is still charged. If your client has a short timeout and retries, you can pay twice for one page. Set the client timeout to at least 70 seconds on ScraperAPI, and lean on its own retries instead.

Which one should you buy

Buy ZenRows if most of your pages need a browser and you do not scrape the big named retailers. The 5-credit render rate makes it the cheaper meter on that work at every size, the 14-rung ladder lets you buy close to your real volume, and the 5,000 free credits a month are enough to test your actual targets before you pay. Our ZenRows pricing breakdown lists every rung with its cost per 1,000 pages.

Buy ScraperAPI if the job is plain HTML at volume, Amazon, Walmart or eBay, Google results, or heavily defended sites at more than about $150 a month. Its flat named-domain rates and bigger credit buckets win there, and the full plan math is in our guide to ScraperAPI pricing. If a third proxy API is on your list, ZenRows vs ScrapingBee and ScrapingBee vs ScraperAPI price those pairs the same way.

There is a third case. If the pages are public sites that do not fight back, and what you want at the end is structured records rather than HTML, you are paying either vendor for proxy capacity you do not use and then writing the parser yourself. ClawEngine crawls from a start URL, renders JavaScript and returns markdown or typed JSON against your schema at a flat per-page price, about 250,000 pages for $99 a month, $0.40 per 1,000 with rendering included. It does not defeat anti-bot systems, so for defended targets the honest answer is still one of these two. Compare our plans against your workload, or see how the same math works for an LLM crawler in ScrapingBee vs Firecrawl.

Frequently asked questions

Is ZenRows cheaper than ScraperAPI?

For JavaScript-rendered pages, yes. ZenRows charges 5 credits a rendered page and ScraperAPI charges 10, so 100,000 rendered pages a month is $99 on ZenRows and $149 on ScraperAPI. For plain HTML above a million pages, named retail domains and protected pages above about $150 a month, ScraperAPI is cheaper because its credits are sold in larger buckets.

How much does ZenRows cost per 1,000 requests?

It depends on the rung and the request type. A plain request is $0.42 per 1,000 on the $19 Build rung and $0.11 on the $549 Scale rung. A rendered page is five times that, and a rendered page with premium proxies is 25 times, $6.90 per 1,000 on the $69 Launch rung and $2.75 on Scale. Only successful requests are billed.

How much does ScraperAPI cost per 1,000 requests?

A plain request is $0.49 per 1,000 on the $49 Hobby plan, $0.15 on Startup and $0.10 on Business. Rendering is 10 credits, so $4.90, $1.49 and $1.00 per 1,000 on those plans. Amazon pages are 5 credits and Google results 25. Yearly billing takes 10 percent off every plan.

Do ZenRows and ScraperAPI charge for failed requests?

Mostly no. ZenRows bills only successful requests, but it treats 404 and 410 responses as successful. ScraperAPI bills 200 and 404 responses and does not bill other errors, though it does charge for a request you cancel before 70 seconds. On both, a list full of dead URLs costs real money.

Which is better for scraping Amazon, ZenRows or ScraperAPI?

ScraperAPI. It publishes a flat 5-credit rate for Amazon, Walmart and eBay, which puts 200,000 product pages on its $149 plan. ZenRows bills by request type, and a retail page that needs premium proxies and rendering costs 25 credits, so the same job lands on a $549 rung. Test success rates on your own product URLs before you commit to either.