ZenRows

ZenRows — Scraper API plus a CDP scraping browser on a shared residential pool. ZenRows started as a per-request scraper API and added a Scraping Browser that gives you a real CDP connection, which lets it serve both one-shot fetches and stateful flows. Anti-bot handling, fingerprinting and residential rotation are bundled rather than metered separately at the entry tiers. It undercuts Bright Data noticeably and has closed much of the capability gap. Founded 2021. Seed.

We track it in 1 comparison — Browser APIs — so every claim below is a cell in a table you can open and check rather than an impression. Across those rosters it sits against 12 other tools, and what follows is where it visibly separates from them.

Where it wins.

• Residential proxy — included, tied for best across 3 of 13 tools.

Each of those is ranked against the whole roster on its category page, not against a hand-picked subset, so a first place here means first of everything we list.

Where it gives ground.

• Live view — No. Browserbase records Yes.
• Session replay — No. Browserbase records Yes.
• Agent API — No. Hyperbrowser records Yes.
• Human handoff — No. Browserless records Yes.

None of these disqualify it on their own. They are the fields to check against your own requirements before you commit, because they are the ones where a competitor genuinely does better.

Provenance. 19 of 26 tracked fields carry a value for ZenRows, and 4 of those cite a document you can open. Last verified 2026-07-01. Every figure keeps its own provenance — measured by us, claimed by the vendor, inferred, or community-reported — and we would rather print a dash than a guess.

Its nearest neighbour in our data is Airtop. ZenRows is ahead on CDP endpoint (Yes against Partial). Airtop takes Live view (Yes against No) and Agent API (Yes against No). That pattern repeats across the rest of the roster — see ZenRows alternatives for the other rivals, each compared the same way.

Founded

2021

Funding

Seed

Fields we track

19 of 26

Last verified

2026-07-01

The value pick for unblocking. It does most of what Bright Data does at a visibly lower price, with a simpler console and less enterprise ceremony. You give up the very largest IP pool and the debugging tools, which matters most on the hardest targets and barely at all on the rest.

Residential proxy

included1st of 13

Inferred

Live view

○No10th of 13

Inferred

Session replay

○No10th of 13

Inferred

Stealth mode

●Yes1st of 13

Vendor-claimedverified 2026-07-01source

CDP endpoint

●Yes1st of 13

Vendor-claimedverified 2026-07-01source

CAPTCHA solving

●Yes1st of 13

Inferredverified 2026-07-01

Playwright

●Yes1st of 13

Vendor-claimedverified 2026-07-01source

Agent API

○No8th of 13

Inferred

ZenRows is the right call in these situations, each one drawn from a field we actually record:

• Cost-sensitive scraping against moderately protected sites.
• Teams wanting one vendor for both fetch-and-parse and stateful sessions.
• Migrating off a per-request API without changing pricing shape.
• Residential proxy is your binding constraint. ZenRows records included, the best figure in the Browser APIs roster. We define that field as how residential egress is supplied.

Reach for something else when any of the following is a requirement rather than a nice-to-have:

• Live view. ZenRows records No on the Browser APIs table. Browserbase records Yes on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.
• Session replay. ZenRows records No on the Browser APIs table. Browserbase records Yes on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.
• Agent API. ZenRows records No on the Browser APIs table. Hyperbrowser records Yes on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.
• Human handoff. ZenRows records No on the Browser APIs table. Browserless records Yes on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.
• Pricing model. ZenRows records per-credit, 9th of 13 in the Browser APIs roster. Browserbase records per-hour on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.

We publish this block because a comparison that only lists what a tool is good at is marketing. Every figure above sits on the same page as its source, and the field definitions are on the category tables if you want to check how we measured them.

What we don't know. 7 of the 26 fields we track for ZenRows are still blank: Anti-bot pass rate, Cold start, Max concurrency, Chrome extensions, MCP server, Per browser-hour and GitHub stars. Those render as dashes rather than as zeroes or assumptions, because an empty cell and a bad cell are not the same thing and only one of them is honest. If you know any of these figures and can point at a document, tell us.