ZenRows vs Apify – Top Differences
| ZenRows | Apify | |
|---|---|---|
|
Success Rate
|
Very High | Moderate to low |
|
Price per 1k Requests
|
$0.28 | $0.49 |
|
Concurrent Requests
|
Unlimited | 100+ |
|
Residential Proxies
|
55M+ IPs across 185+ countries | 4M+ IPs across 30+ locations (only US and EU) |
|
Scraping Browser
|
✅ | ❌ |
“We power it all with ZenRows. It’s the most cost-effective and reliable data enrichment tool on the market.”
1. ZenRows
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5.0
ZenRows makes web scraping simple and reliable. It provides you with unlimited concurrent access to 55M+ residential IPs, built-in JS rendering, and an intelligent anti-bot bypass system to ensure you get clean data from any website without interruption.
Getting started with ZenRows is extremely easy. Let's see how it works against an anti-bot challenge page, a web page protected by an anti-bot.
Start by signing up for a new account, and you'll get to the Request Builder page.
There, paste your target URL, and activate premium proxies and JS rendering.
Select your programming language (Python, in this case) and choose the API connection mode. Then, copy and paste the generated code into your scraper file.
Here's what the generated Python code looks like:
# pip install requests
import requests
url = "https://www.scrapingcourse.com/antibot-challenge"
apikey = "<YOUR_ZENROWS_API_KEY>"
params = {
"url": url,
"apikey": apikey,
"js_render": "true",
"premium_proxy": "true",
}
response = requests.get("https://api.zenrows.com/v1/", params=params)
print(response.text)
The above code outputs the protected site's full-page HTML, showing that it bypassed the anti-bot measure:
<html lang="en">
<head>
<!-- ... -->
<title>Antibot Challenge - ScrapingCourse.com</title>
<!-- ... -->
</head>
<body>
<!-- ... -->
<h2>
You bypassed the Antibot challenge! :D
</h2>
<!-- other content omitted for brevity -->
</body>
</html>
Congratulations 🎉! You bypassed anti-bot protection using ZenRows.
2. ScrapingBee
⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.9
ScrapingBee offers additional features like screenshots, extraction rules, and detailed analytics, which ScraperAPI lacks. While their credits cost a lot less for JavaScript rendering, they charge extra for geo-targeting, unlike ScraperAPI, which includes 30+ locations.
Pros:
✅ Good documentation
✅ Easy to integrate
✅ Javascript rendering
Cons:
❌ Moderate success rate
❌ Geo-targeting has an additional cost
❌ No auto-parsing capabilities
3. Bright Data
⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.7
Bright Data offers a versatile scraping infrastructure that competes with Apify's ecosystem. While they provide an extensive proxy network and various scraping tools, users often face challenges with high costs, and their success rates tend to be inconsistent, especially with heavily protected websites.
Pros:
✅ Largest proxy network available
✅ Pre-collected datasets
✅ Scraping browser
Cons:
❌ Expensive
❌ Steep learning curve for developers
4. Oxylabs
⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.5
Oxylabs provides enterprise-level scraping solutions similar to Apify but with a stronger focus on proxy services. Their infrastructure is robust, but users often struggle with integration complexity and high costs. Additionally, users often report difficulties with their technical support response times.
Pros:
✅ Extensive proxy network
✅ ML-driven Scraper APIs
✅ Readily available datasets
Cons:
❌ Expensive
❌ Slow customer support