ZenRows vs ScrapingBee – Top Differences
| ZenRows | ScrapingBee | |
|---|---|---|
|
Success Rate
|
Very High | Moderate |
|
Customer Support
|
24/7 chat with developers and dedicated support. | Live chat but a lot of negative reviews from users. |
|
Concurrent Requests
|
Unlimited | 200 |
|
Auto-parsing
|
>20 Sites | ❌ |
|
Standalone Proxies
|
✅ | ❌ |
“We used ScrapingBee in the past, but its features were not evolving fast enough, and the success rate for some relevant websites was too low. We're very happy with our decision to use ZenRows. Its API is easy to use, well-documented, and highly flexible.
1. ZenRows
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5.0
ZenRows delivers the highest success rate and excellent customer support and documentation. Trusted by both emerging startups and leading enterprises, ZenRows has become the definitive solution for reliable web extraction at any scale.
It optimizes your request headers, auto-rotates premium proxies, bypasses CAPTCHAs and any anti-bot system, and more. With ZenRows, you'll never get blocked when web scraping again.
Getting started with ZenRows is extremely easy. Let's see how it works against the 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. Bright Data
⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.7
While ScrapingBee is designed to be more accessible for smaller projects, Bright Data is better for large-scale data collection. Bright Data's comprehensive geo-targeting and dataset marketplace are features that ScrapingBee lacks. Although they provide robust proxy management tools, the success rate is pretty low, and the pricing is really high.
Pros:
✅ Largest proxy network available
✅ Pre-collected datasets
✅ Scraping browser
Cons:
❌ Low success rate
❌ Expensive
❌ Steep learning curve for developers
3. Oxylabs
⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.5
Oxylabs provides web scraping and proxy services focused on enterprise clients. Its large pool of residential and datacenter proxies comes with comprehensive rotation features. However, their pricing exceeds even ScrapingBee's rates, and their customer support has received consistent criticism for slow response times and unresolved technical issues.
Pros:
✅ Comprehensive proxy network
✅ ML-driven Scraper APIs
✅ Readily available datasets
Cons:
❌ Complex integration process
❌ Expensive
❌ Unreliable customer support
4. ScraperAPI
⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.3
ScraperAPI focuses on simplicity and ease of use. Their service combines rotating proxies with JavaScript rendering capabilities, making it suitable for basic to moderate scraping projects. While they offer lower pricing tiers starting at $49/month, their feature set is more limited compared to most popular alternatives to ScrapingBee.
Pros:
✅ Automatic proxy rotation
✅ Competitive pricing
✅ Good geo-targeting options
Cons:
❌ Basic anti-bot protection
❌ Limited advanced features
❌ Less sophisticated proxy selection