# BrowserAct vs ZenRows (slim)

> ZenRows scores 75.9 (BB) to BrowserAct's 44.4 (E) for scraping. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browseract-vs-zenrows.md (~5,400 tokens) · this version ~2,680 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browseract-vs-zenrows.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browseract-vs-zenrows
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

ZenRows scores 75.9 (BB) on agent readiness against BrowserAct's 44.4 (E), and leads in every scored category. Both do scraping.

- BrowserAct: E 44.4, rank #1204 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/browseract.min.md
- ZenRows: BB 75.9, rank #51 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/zenrows.min.md
- BrowserAct, good for Teams that want no-code, prompt-built scrapers an agent can rerun on a schedule. Also No incidents deducted, where ZenRows loses 3 points for them.
- ZenRows, good for An agent hitting protected sites that wants the service to choose the setup and bill only success, and for agents that must onboard without a human. Ahead on Reliability, 87 against 23; Schema & documentation, 93 against 76; Agent ergonomics, 79 against 49; Security & auth, 50 against 41; Payments & pricing, 80 against 25; Maintenance & community, 90 against 61; Transparency & trust, 79 against 44. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; Runs on your own machine; Free to start without a card.

| Category | BrowserAct | ZenRows |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 23 | 87 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 76 | 93 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 49 | 79 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 41 | 50 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 25 | 80 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 61 | 90 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 44 | 79 |

| Fact (where they differ) | BrowserAct | ZenRows |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Hongkong Ziniao Technology Co., Limited | ZenRows |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.browseract.com/mcp/` | `https://api.zenrows.com/v1/` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| x402 | no | payer tooling only |
| Tools exposed | none | 63 |
| MCP registry | not listed | `io.github.ZenRows/zenrows-mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-11-05 | 2026-10-30 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-05-15 | 2025-07-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-05-15 | 2024-09-01 |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | none | 21 stars, 35k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.8/5 (8) |

Why the edge:
- Reliability, ZenRows +64: BrowserAct 23 (Hosted reading. No status page found (0) and no readable incident history (5). The docs say there are no rate limits, and give concurrency by plan (2 free, up to 20 for paid API users) and a 7-hour task cap (8). No 429 or retry guidance, and no idempotency keys on task creation (0). No SLA (0). No beta label on the API or MCP server (10). 0 + 5 + 8 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 23.); ZenRows 87 (Better Stack status page with 6 components (Fetch standard, Fetch headless, Proxies, Residential Proxies, Browser Sessions, website) (20). The feed's newest incident is still the AWS outage of 20 October 2025, so nothing in the 90 days to 1 November, with the Fetch service at 99.998 per cent and the website at 100 on 1 November (30). Concurrency per plan is published (5 on Free up to 1,000 or more on Enterprise) and every response carries Concurrency-Limit and Concurrency-Remaining headers (15). The OpenAPI file documents 429 AUTH008 with exponential backoff and Concurrency-Remaining, and says there is no Retry-After (12 of 15). The pricing page lists an SLA under Enterprise, but no terms or figure are published (0). Fetch is generally available. Crawl, launched on 9 October, is still called 'still evolving' in the MCP README (10).)
- Payments & pricing, ZenRows +55: BrowserAct 25 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Plan prices and credit costs per bot build, run and workflow step are public, but there is no direct per-call price (15). A free plan with 200 credits; whether it needs a card isn't stated (10). A person signs up and creates the key in the dashboard (0). 0 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 25.); ZenRows 80 (x402 and MPP through an agent storefront at agents.zenrows.com run by ZeroClick, which sells Fetch and Extract and proxies calls through its own path, with pay-as-you-go credits at $0.50 per 1,000 (10,000 minimum) per the pricing docs. Nothing on api.zenrows.com itself (20 of 40). Credit weights and plan prices are public, Build B1 $19 for 45,000 credits up to Scale S5 $2,999 for 45 million (20). 5,000 free credits a month, no card (20). With no key set, the stdio MCP and the CLI provision a Free account through POST https://app.zenrows.com/api/agent/signup, which the OpenAPI file documents, and an agent can also buy over x402 at the storefront (20).)
- Transparency & trust, ZenRows +35: BrowserAct 44 (Closed service with published terms naming the operating company and governing law (15). The privacy policy of 15 May 2025 states retention by category and that crawled data is kept per plan and deletable by the user (15). No deprecation policy or notices found (0). No sub-processors or data locations named (3). 15 + 15 + 0 + 3 = 33.); ZenRows 79 (Closed service, with ZENROWS, S.L. named in full (Getxo, Spain, tax ID B10660298). The MCP is MIT (15 of 30). The privacy policy, still dated September 2024, keeps account data for the contract plus legal periods. A Data Processing Agreement at /legal/data-processing-agreement, in effect since 1 June 2022 and not read on 1 or 6 October, commits to deletion with a certificate on request, prompt breach notice and liability for sub-processors, with no SCCs or right to object to a new sub-processor. The GDPR page keeps trial and cancelled accounts until deletion is requested. Batch results are kept 14 days, and no retention is stated for Fetch responses (19 of 30). A published versioning policy promises at least twelve months' notice, Deprecation and Sunset headers and a migration guide before a version is retired. The 2026 renames carried no dated notices (15 of 20). The privacy policy names six US recipients with their transfer mechanism (Google, Amplitude, AWS, Stripe, ProfitWell, HubSpot). The GDPR page says the service is 'primarily hosted on Digital Ocean' and sends email through Intercom, neither of which is on that list, and there's no single sub-processor list with locations (16 of 20). 15+19+15+16 = 65.)
- Agent ergonomics, ZenRows +30: BrowserAct 49 (Graded on the API, since the MCP tool list isn't published. Task results come back whole, with no field selection found (10). Lists of bots, templates and tasks are paginated (15). Errors carry numeric codes with documented meanings for a few cases (12). No idempotency key on task creation; webhooks and a status endpoint avoid polling loops (5). No official SDK in two languages; the CLI is Python (7). 10 + 15 + 12 + 5 + 7 = 49.); ZenRows 79 (63 MCP tools on 1 November, up from 52 on 17 October, after v2.15.0 to v2.18.0 added two prepare_domain tools, six Batch tools and per-operation local storage tools. 38 are browser actions, and there are no toolsets. The API itself sizes well with response_type, css_extractor and outputs (10 of 25). Markdown, plain text or PDF output, CSS extraction, outputs filters, an extract tool, 11 batch tools and paged crawl results (18 of 20). Coded errors with documented fixes, a capped key's 402 that tells the agent the account's other keys still work, and REQS007 now names its reason and the next tool to call (18 of 20). Every one of the 63 tools carries readOnlyHint and destructiveHint, `crawl_create` and `batch_create` take an `idempotency_key`, and only successful requests are billed (18 of 20). mode=auto picks the setup and url is the only required field. Official Python and Node SDKs (15).)
- Maintenance & community, ZenRows +29: BrowserAct 61 (browser-act-cli 1.6.2 on 5 November 2026, read from PyPI's release feed (30). Six CLI releases from 15 October to 5 November (20). A closed service with a support address, but no public changelog or issue tracker found (8). No official SDKs and no entry in the official MCP registry (0). The CLI package carries no licence or repository in its metadata (3). 30 + 20 + 8 + 0 + 3 = 61.); ZenRows 90 (MCP v2.18.0 on 2026-10-30 (30). Seven MCP minor releases from 18 to 30 October alone (v2.12.0 to v2.18.0), and dated changelog entries on 2, 5 and 9 October (20). We couldn't read GitHub issues. PRs are merged within days and the dated changelog on zenrows.com runs to 9 October (15 of 25). In the official MCP registry as io.github.ZenRows/zenrows-mcp, with 2.18.0 published on 30 October and marked latest (15). CI runs typecheck, lint and tests on a Node matrix, and a check that server.json matches the package version (10).)
- Schema & documentation, ZenRows +17: BrowserAct 76 (An OpenAPI 3.0.3 document behind the API reference (25). llms.txt on both the site and the docs, with Markdown pages (10). Endpoint descriptions explain the run flow (find a bot, read its input_schema, then run) and when to use the lighter status endpoint (14). Inputs are typed, but a run's input is an object shaped by each bot's own schema (10). Examples per endpoint and named error codes such as 10879 and 10127; no full error table found (10). The path carries v3, but no changelog was found (7). 25 + 10 + 14 + 10 + 10 + 7 = 76.); ZenRows 93 (OpenAPI 3.1 at www.zenrows.com/openapi.json covers Fetch, Extract, Crawl (added after the 9 October launch), Batch, agent signup and HMAC key rotation, and the 63 MCP tools have typed zod inputs (25). llms.txt with 105 entries linking 240 docs pages on 1 November, each with a Markdown copy (10). The scrape tool says when to prefer extract, when to turn on js_render or premium_proxy, and gives three examples, and the crawl tools say when to wait, page or download. The browser tools are terser (18 of 20). Enums on mode and response_type, URL validation and required fields, but css_extractor is a JSON string and outputs a comma-separated string (12 of 15). Error catalogue of 35 codes such as AUTH004 and RESP002, plus a table of Batch and Extract codes, grouped by HTTP status with fixes, and every OpenAPI operation lists its error responses (15). The API is versioned in the path (v1, never retired), a dated changelog at www.zenrows.com/changelog runs to 9 October 2026, with nothing newer on 1 November, and the MCP has semver tags. The 2026 renames (Universal Scraper API to Fetch, Scraping Browser to Browser Sessions) aren't in it (13 of 15).)