Bright Data vs ZenRows

Bright Data

Pay only for successful requests, $1.50 per 1,000 on Web Unlocker and SERP. No public status page or incident history.

ZenRows

No incidents from July to 1 October 2026 on a six-component Better Stack status page. The Fetch API only takes the key in the query string.

Bright Data

1. Connect with OAuth or keep the ?token= URL out of logs and shared configs
2. Add groups= or tools= to the MCP URL only for the extractors you need. The full set is 69 tools
3. Retry reject_block errors, since each attempt uses a different peer. Certificate and DNS errors fail the same way twice
4. Back off on a 429 sr_rate_limit. Bright Data throttles a target whose success rate drops
5. Use the batch tools for up to 10 searches or scrapes in one call

ZenRows

1. Start with mode=auto and let it escalate. Force js_render or premium_proxy only when you know the site needs it
2. Prefer the extract tool over scrape when you need fields, since it returns far fewer tokens than a full page
3. Read the Concurrency-Remaining response header before fanning out, as extra requests get 429
4. Set ZENROWS_AUTO_SIGNUP=false in stdio configs so a missing key fails loudly instead of creating an account