# fastCRW vs ZenRows

> ZenRows scores 75.9 (BB) to fastCRW's 64.3 (B) for scraping. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-zenrows
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-zenrows.md (~5,700 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-07

ZenRows scores 75.9 (BB) on agent readiness against fastCRW's 64.3 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. fastCRW leads on agent ergonomics. Both do scraping.

- fastCRW: grade B, 64.3/100, rank #478 of 1486. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/crw.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/crw.json
- ZenRows: grade BB, 75.9/100, rank #51 of 1486. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/zenrows.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/zenrows.json
- Best web scraping and crawling APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/web-scrapers/index.md
- All 501 scrapers comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/web-scrapers/index.md

## Which one, for what

### fastCRW (B)

Good for: Agents that want Firecrawl-style scrape, crawl, map, search and extract at lower per-page cost, or a small self-hosted engine.

Ahead on:
- Agent ergonomics, 91 against 79

Also in its favour:
- Open source
- No incidents deducted, where ZenRows loses 3 points for them

Watch for: The status page shows a live check and an uptime objective but no incident history

### ZenRows (BB)

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 50
- Security & auth, 50 against 40
- Payments & pricing, 80 against 35
- Transparency & trust, 79 against 60

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better

Watch for: The Fetch API only takes the key in the query string


## Why the edge

### Payments & pricing: ZenRows +45

- fastCRW (35): No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Plans are public with credit costs per operation and top-up prices per block of credits, $9 per 1,000 on Hobby down to $299 per 500,000 on Scale, but top-ups need a plan, so between plan-only and per-unit (15 of 20). 500 one-off credits with no card, plus up to 500 from onboarding tasks (20). Hosted keys need a person to sign up in a browser; the free self-hosted engine runs with no account but isn't the graded surface (0). 0 + 15 + 20 + 0 = 35.
- 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).

### Reliability: ZenRows +37

- fastCRW (50): Graded on the hosted lines, for the hosted API and MCP server an agent would call; the self-hosted engine would read higher on the local lines. fastcrw.com/status is a first-party page with a live health check and a 99.9% monthly uptime objective, but no components with history (10 of 20). It lists no incidents and keeps no history we could read (5). Concurrency per plan is published, 3 on Free to 150 on Scale, while the request-rate guard above it is deliberately unpublished (12 of 15). The rate-limits page documents Retry-After and X-RateLimit headers, gives exponential backoff code, and separates 429 (retry) from 402 (stop). No idempotency keys for crawl, extract or monitor starts (13 of 15). Pricing mentions an SLA only as 'Premier + SLA' on Enterprise, with no terms, and the terms promise no uptime (0). The hosted service is sold on paid plans with no beta label, though the engine is at 0.41.0 (10). 10 + 5 + 12 + 13 + 0 + 10 = 50.
- 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).

### Transparency & trust: ZenRows +19

- fastCRW (60): The engine and MCP server are AGPL-3.0 and the SDKs MIT, while the hosted control plane is closed under terms that name no legal entity (25 of 30). The terms say crawled data is handled transiently with zero data retention for approved accounts, but the privacy policy is undated, names no controller, gives no retention periods and mentions no DPA (10 of 30). The CHANGELOG flags breaking changes, deprecated v2 extract routes return a warning on every response, and the October 2026 402 change is dated in the docs, with no standing notice policy (10 of 20). Local data-source telemetry is disclosed with an opt-out. The privacy policy names Stripe, Google Analytics, Google Ads and an X pixel, but infrastructure and search providers are unnamed and no data location is given (8 of 20). 25 + 10 + 10 + 8 = 53.
- 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: fastCRW +12

- fastCRW (91): 11 compact MCP tools, two of them the data-source tools added in 0.41.0. Content is capped near 15,000 characters with `truncated: true` and a resume offset, and map returns at most 100 URLs by default (20 of 25). Formats, main-content filtering, include and exclude selectors, maxLength, startIndex, limit and crawl depth and page caps (20). Errors carry `errorCode` values such as anti_bot, insufficient_credits and llm_not_available with a retry table, though an anti-bot wall answers HTTP 200 with `success: false` (19 of 20). Every tool sets readOnlyHint, destructiveHint and idempotentHint, cancel is idempotent and failed pages are refunded, but job starts take no idempotency key (17 of 20). Only `url` is required, with official Python and TypeScript SDKs (15). 20 + 20 + 19 + 17 + 15 = 91.
- 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).

### Security & auth: ZenRows +10

- fastCRW (40): The hosted MCP server publishes RFC 9728 metadata naming its own authorisation server, with PKCE S256, dynamic client registration and one scope, `mcp:tools`, and the API takes revocable Bearer keys from the dashboard. No key scopes or second scope found (22). The authentication page documents fastcrw.com/mcp/<API_KEY> as a way in, a key in the URL path, so less 10 (12 of 30). Tools mostly read, and data-source calls check approvals, but there is no read-only key or confirmation step for monitors (8 of 20). Managed LLM extraction, summaries and answers wrap scraped text in a nonce fence (crates/crw-extract/src/untrusted.rs), and the hardening guide treats pages as untrusted, but the MCP docs give agents no guidance on scraped content (7 of 15). Each response reports `creditsUsed`; no per-call log in the docs (5 of 15). SECURITY.md names security@fastcrw.com and GitHub private reporting with a 48-hour acknowledgement, and CI runs CodeQL and OpenSSF Scorecard. security.txt answers 404, and no bounty or certification found (8 of 20). 12 + 8 + 7 + 5 + 8 = 40.
- ZenRows (50): The Fetch API takes the key only as the apikey query parameter, as the OpenAPI security schemes still show on 1 November. Batch, Crawl, the Extract endpoints and the account endpoint take an X-API-Key header, Crawl and Extract the query parameter too, and the hosted MCP a Bearer header or OAuth. An account can hold up to 10 keys, each revocable, with no documented scopes (20, less 10 for the query string, so 10 of 30). Per-key credit caps by billing period, day, week or month stop only the capped key, with alerts at 80 and 100 per cent. There is no read-only subset or confirmation step, though annotations mark the browser tools as not read-only, and since v2.15.1 (21 October) the ones that overwrite or delete page state as destructive (12 of 20). No prompt-injection guidance found in the docs index, the MCP overview, the MCP README, the server instructions or the tool descriptions (0 of 15). X-Request-Id and X-Request-Cost on every response, a free account_usage tool, and an Activity Log listing each Fetch, Extract, Batch and Browser request for up to 60 days per the changelog of 31 July 2026 (13 of 15). security.txt on www.zenrows.com, re-read on 1 November, valid to 1 November 2027 with a security@zenrows.com contact and a linked information security policy. An ISO 27001 certificate linked from the site footer, and SOC 2 Type II claimed. No bug bounty found (15 of 20).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | fastCRW | ZenRows | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 50 | 87 | ZenRows +37 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 91 | 93 | ZenRows +2 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 91 | 79 | fastCRW +12 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 40 | 50 | ZenRows +10 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 35 | 80 | ZenRows +45 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 93 | 90 | fastCRW +3 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 60 | 79 | ZenRows +19 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| **Total** | | **64.3 · B** | **75.9 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | fastCRW | ZenRows |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Nanofy OÜ | ZenRows |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://fastcrw.com/mcp` | `https://api.zenrows.com/v1/` |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | payer tooling only |
| Licence | AGPL-3.0 | none |
| Tools exposed | 11 | 63 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.fastcrw/crw` | `io.github.ZenRows/zenrows-mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-30 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-04-04 | 2025-07-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2024-09-01 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 1.2k stars, 881 npm/wk | 21 stars, 35k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.8/5 (8) |

## How the scores have moved

### fastCRW

No score change since it was listed.

### ZenRows

- -3.0 on 1 November 2026 (A to BB): negative event
- +0.1 on 27 October 2026: checklist
- +4.0 on 17 October 2026 (BB to A): product, new evidence

## Verdicts

**fastCRW.** Agents get 11 compact, annotated MCP tools with bounded output, a public OpenAPI spec, refunds on failed pages and a free self-hosted engine. The hosted service has no status history, publishes no SLA terms, names its operator only on the support page, and documents an MCP address with the API key in the URL path.

**ZenRows.** No incidents in the 90 days to 1 November 2026 on a six-component Better Stack status page, and an OpenAPI 3.1 file with coded errors. The Fetch API only takes the key in the query string.

## Before you call either

### fastCRW

1. Connect to https://fastcrw.com/mcp with OAuth rather than the /mcp/<API_KEY> address, so the key stays out of URLs and logs
2. Branch on `errorCode`. Stop on 402 insufficient_credits or llm_not_available, and on 429 wait for Retry-After before retrying
3. Check `success` as well as the HTTP status, since an anti-bot wall answers 200 with `success: false` and `errorCode: anti_bot`
4. Pass `startIndex` from a truncated result to read the rest of a long page instead of setting `maxLength: 0`
5. Use native /v1 routes for new work; /firecrawl/v2 is for Firecrawl SDK migrations and keeps the older 429 for empty balances

### 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. On REQS007 from extract, read `reason`. Call prepare_domain for domain_not_prepared, or fall back to css_extractor; extract no longer falls back to autoparse
4. Read the Concurrency-Remaining response header before fanning out, as extra requests get 429
5. On a 402 with AUTH014, only this key hit its cap. Read X-Key-Credits-Remaining and don't tell the user to buy credits
6. Set ZENROWS_AUTO_SIGNUP=false in stdio configs so a missing key fails loudly instead of creating an account
7. Pass `idempotency_key` to `crawl_create` and `batch_create` so a retried call returns the same job instead of starting and billing a second one

## Tutorials

- [Extract page titles and links with ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/tutorials/zenrows/), for ZenRows

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, fastCRW or ZenRows?

ZenRows scores 75.9 (BB) on agent readiness against fastCRW's 64.3 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. fastCRW leads on agent ergonomics.

### Do fastCRW and ZenRows need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call fastCRW and ZenRows without installing anything?

Yes. fastCRW has a hosted endpoint at https://fastcrw.com/mcp and ZenRows at https://api.zenrows.com/v1/.

### Are fastCRW and ZenRows open source?

fastCRW is open source (AGPL-3.0). No open-source release is listed for ZenRows.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-zenrows.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-zenrows.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "crw", "b": "zenrows"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare crw zenrows`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/crw.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/zenrows.json

## Other comparisons with fastCRW or ZenRows

- [Apify MCP Server vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apify-mcp-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Bright Data vs fastCRW](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-crw.md)
- [Bright Data vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-zenrows.md)
- [BrowserAct vs fastCRW](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browseract-vs-crw.md)
- [BrowserAct vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browseract-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Context.dev vs fastCRW](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/context-dev-vs-crw.md)
- [Context.dev vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/context-dev-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Crawl4AI vs fastCRW](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crawl4ai-vs-crw.md)
- [Crawl4AI vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crawl4ai-vs-zenrows.md)
- [fastCRW vs Decodo Web Data API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-decodo.md)
- [fastCRW vs Diffbot](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-diffbot.md)
- [fastCRW vs jevcrawl](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-jevcrawl.md)
- [fastCRW vs Jina Reader](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-jina-reader.md)
- [fastCRW vs Microlink](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-microlink.md)
- [fastCRW vs Olostep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-olostep.md)
- [fastCRW vs Outcrawl](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-outcrawl.md)
- [fastCRW vs Oxylabs Web Scraper API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-oxylabs-web-scraper.md)
- [fastCRW vs Scrape.do](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrape-do.md)
- [fastCRW vs ScrapeGraphAI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapegraphai.md)
- [fastCRW vs Scrapeless](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapeless.md)
- [fastCRW vs ScrapeOps Proxy API Aggregator](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapeops.md)
- [fastCRW vs ScraperAPI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scraperapi.md)
- [fastCRW vs Scrapewise](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapewise.md)
- [fastCRW vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapfly.md)
- [fastCRW vs ScrapingAnt](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapingant.md)
- [fastCRW vs ScrapingBee](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapingbee.md)
- [fastCRW vs Scrapingdog](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapingdog.md)
- [fastCRW vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [fastCRW vs WebScraping.AI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-webscraping-ai.md)
- [fastCRW vs Zyte API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-zyte.md)
- [Decodo Web Data API vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/decodo-vs-zenrows.md)
- [jevcrawl vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Jina Reader vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jina-reader-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Microlink vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/microlink-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Olostep vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Outcrawl vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/outcrawl-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Oxylabs Web Scraper API vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/oxylabs-web-scraper-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Scrape.do vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrape-do-vs-zenrows.md)
- [ScrapeGraphAI vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapegraphai-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Scrapeless vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeless-vs-zenrows.md)
- [ScraperAPI vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scraperapi-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Scrapewise vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapewise-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Scrapfly vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapfly-vs-zenrows.md)
- [ScrapingAnt vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapingant-vs-zenrows.md)
- [ScrapingBee vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapingbee-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Scrapingdog vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapingdog-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Spider vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/spider-cloud-vs-zenrows.md)
- [WebScraping.AI vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/webscraping-ai-vs-zenrows.md)
- [ZenRows vs Zyte API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/zenrows-vs-zyte.md)
- [fastCRW vs Firecrawl MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-firecrawl-mcp.md)
- [fastCRW vs Qovia](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-qovia.md)
- [fastCRW vs ScrapeAtlas](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-scrapeatlas.md)
- [fastCRW vs SoldFetch](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crw-vs-soldfetch.md)
- [Diffbot vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Qovia vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qovia-vs-zenrows.md)
- [ScrapeAtlas vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-zenrows.md)
- [SoldFetch vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/soldfetch-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Apify MCP Server vs fastCRW](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apify-mcp-vs-crw.md)
- [ScrapeOps Proxy API Aggregator vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeops-vs-zenrows.md)

---

Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp