ZenRows vs. Scrapfly: Automatic vs. Configuring Everything Yourself

Scrapfly asks you to pick the right proxy type, JS rendering, and anti-bot settings before each scrape, and bills for your choices upfront. ZenRows just takes your target URL and figures out the rest for you without billings piling up.

ZenRows selects the right configuration per request, no manual tuning.

Pay only for the requests that get through.

One subscription, all products.

Flat, predictable pricing vs. Scrapfly's 25x residential cost.

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Hero section image displaying ZenRows' capabilities

Three Reasons ScrapFly Users Switch to ZenRows

Complex Manual Configuration

With Scrapfly, you choose your proxy pool, JS rendering, and set the ASP on a per-request basis. Get it wrong, and you'll waste credits and have to reconfigure manually. ZenRows' Adaptive Stealth selects the right bypass configuration for every target: no manual guesses required.

Credit Complexity

Scrapfly's residential proxies cost 25x base credits. Add JS rendering, and you're at +30x. Every request commits to the full cost upfront, whether you use the right configuration or not. ZenRows has one flat subscription. No multipliers. No per-feature credit stacks. You pay for results, not for features.

Maintenance Overhead and Delayed Escalation

ScrapFly's service interruptions take hours to days to weeks, API credit costs can fluctuate without warning, and the average resolution time is 3–7 business days. Sites' anti-bot changes are handled on ZenRows' end. No parameter updates required. Your code stays the same.

ZenRows vs. Scrapfly: Transparency or Hidden Multipliers

ZenRows and Scrapfly comparison
	ZenRows	Scrapfly
Charge for failures	✅Never charged, unconditionally	⚠️Charged if <30% of traffic fails in one hour; long list of excluded status codes
Anti-Bot Bypass	✅Handled for you: auto-adapts to sites' anti-bot changes	⚠️Manual configuration required
Residential proxy cost	✅Included in flat subscription, no per-request multiplier	⚠️25× base credit cost per request
MCP Support	✅	✅
Proxy countries	190+	~120

Check out ZenRows pricing

The Differences Show Up on Your Invoice: Why Cheap Costs More

Scrapfly's $30 plan gets 40,000 basic requests. Stack the browser and residential proxies you need for protected sites, and you're down to 1,290 real requests. To match ZenRows' $69 for 10,000 protected requests, you'd need Scrapfly's $100 plan. Same capability, 45% more expensive. Here's the breakdown:

The Scrapfly Burn Rate

Scrapfly Credits Burned and The Reality comparison
	Scrapfly Credits Burned	The Reality
Scrape a Basic Page	1 Credit	The Baseline.
+ Render JavaScript	5 Credits	5x higher credit consumption
+ Use Residential Proxies	25 Credits	25x higher credit consumption
Scrape a Protected Site (JS + Residential)	31 Credits	31x more credits per request

Check out ZenRows pricing

On Scrapfly, anti-bot bypass features are surcharges. On ZenRows, they're the standard.

Head-to-Head: The Entry Level Reality Check

Scrapfly Discovery ($30/mo) and ZenRows Developer ($69/mo) comparison
	Scrapfly Discovery ($30/mo)	ZenRows Developer ($69/mo)
Basic Requests (No JS/Proxy)	40,000	250,000 (6.2x More)
JS Rendering Requests	8,000	50,000 (6.2x More)
Residential Proxy Requests	1,600	25,000 (15.6x More)
Full Protected Requests (JS+Resi)	1,290	10,000 (7.7x More)
Concurrency (Speed)	5 Threads	20 Threads (4x Faster)

Check out ZenRows pricing

Stop Paying the Difficulty Tax

Effective Cost Per Protected Request:

Scrapfly: $0.023/request
ZenRows: $0.007/request

ZenRows is actually 3.3x cheaper for the sites you care to scrape.

Scrapfly’s $30 for 40,000 requests is a credit mirage. For protected targets, you're looking at 1,290 requests. That’s not a pricing tier, it’s a pricing trap.

From Scrapfly to ZenRows in Minutes: Auto vs. Manual Config

Migrating from Scrapfly to ZenRows is all about parameter changes. Not a codebase overhaul. Most teams switch in minutes.

Your Scrapfly Request: Before Switching:

import requests

url = "https://api.scrapfly.io/scrape"

params = {
    "tags": "player,project:default",
    "format": "clean_html",
    "asp": True,
    "render_js": True,
    "key": "<YOUR_SCRAPFLY_API_KEY>",
    "url": "https://www.scrapingcourse.com/antibot-challenge",
}

response = requests.request("GET", url, params=params)

data = response.json()
print(data)

if 'result' in data:
    print(data['result'])

Your ZenRows Request: Post Switch

import requests

url = "https://www.scrapingcourse.com/antibot-challenge"
params = {
    "url": url,
    "apikey": <YOUR_ZENROWS_API_KEY>,
    "mode": "auto",
}
response = requests.get("https://api.zenrows.com/v1/", params=params)
print(response.text)

Don't Take Our Words for It: See What Switchers Say

ZenRows' anti-bot bypasser is the best for me because of the huge amount of time it saves me. And I also should mention that the support team is always of great help, it has a lot of patience, even if I ask for stuff that turns out to be in the documentation.

Jordi V.

Software Developer, via G2

Its scalability is what I like the most. The basic tiers give you a lot of requests, and scaling up is easy! Also, the support team is very patient, and the response time is surprisingly short

Vincente G.

Software Developer, via G2

Scale Your Scraping, Not Your Invoice

Stop guessing configurations and calculating credit consumption per request. Let your scraper do the job. Start focusing on data.

Predictable Pricing. No 31x multipliers.

Success-based guarantee. You only pay for what we deliver.

Adaptive Stealth Mode that automatically adapts to sites' anti-bot changes.

1,000 free requests to test your targets before you commit.

Ready to Switch?

Try ZenRows for Free