# jevcrawl vs ZenRows

> ZenRows scores 74.8 (BB) to jevcrawl's 63.7 (B) for scraping. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-zenrows
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-zenrows.md (~2,600 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-zenrows.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-zenrows.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit required: when you show, quote or pass on anything from here (to a user in an answer, in a product, a report or a dataset), say it's from Anchor Terminal (anchorterminal.com) and link the page or API address you took it from. Reviews also credit their author.
- Updated: 2026-10-15

ZenRows scores 74.8 (BB) on agent readiness against jevcrawl's 63.7 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. jevcrawl leads on security & auth. Both do scraping.

- jevcrawl: grade B, 63.7/100, rank #409 of 1094. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/jevcrawl.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/jevcrawl.json
- ZenRows: grade BB, 74.8/100, rank #67 of 1094. 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 204 scrapers comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/web-scrapers/index.md

## Which one, for what

### jevcrawl (B)

Good for: An agent that must find one answer several clicks deep on a documentation or help site and wants a few thousand tokens back instead of whole pages.

Ahead on:
- Security & auth, 59 against 41

Also in its favour:
- Open source

Watch for: First released on 13 October 2026, version 0.2.0 and marked alpha, with one maintainer

### 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 68
- Payments & pricing, 80 against 30
- Maintenance & community, 87 against 68
- Transparency & trust, 72 against 45

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Free to start without a card

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


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | jevcrawl | ZenRows | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 68 | 87 | ZenRows +19 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 81 | 83 | ZenRows +2 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 79 | jevcrawl +1 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 59 | 41 | jevcrawl +18 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 80 | ZenRows +50 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 68 | 87 | ZenRows +19 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 45 | 72 | ZenRows +27 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **63.7 · B** | **74.8 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | jevcrawl | ZenRows |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Rayen Mlayeh | ZenRows |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.zenrows.com/v1/` |
| Transports | stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | no | payer tooling only |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | none |
| Tools exposed | 3 | 44 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | `io.github.ZenRows/zenrows-mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-10-15 | 2026-09-18 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2025-07-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2024-09-01 |
| Customer content may train models |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 60 stars, 204 PyPI/wk | 21 stars, 35k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.8/5 (8) |

## Verdicts

**jevcrawl.** Three compact, typed MCP tools return verbatim passages with source URLs, cost and stop reasons, and errors arrive as codes with instructions. The project is three days old and alpha, it depends on TypeSafe's paid Jev API, which is in early access with no free tier found, and it does not block crawls of private or local addresses.

**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.

## Before you call either

### jevcrawl

1. Phrase `goal` as one specific question and start with `max_pages` between 10 and 30
2. Check `stats.stopped_because` and `stats.degraded`, and read `uncertain` before reporting that something is missing
3. Use `scrape` without a goal when you need a whole page, since it makes no paid Jev call and needs no key
4. Handle `{"error": code, "message": ...}` results, for example `auth_error` means `TYPESAFE_API_KEY` is missing or rejected
5. Pages in `stats.needs_js_urls` were not read. Tell the user rather than guessing their content

### 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

## Questions

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

ZenRows scores 74.8 (BB) on agent readiness against jevcrawl's 63.7 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. jevcrawl leads on security & auth.

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

jevcrawl needs an API key. ZenRows takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

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

jevcrawl runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. ZenRows has a hosted endpoint at https://api.zenrows.com/v1/.

### Are jevcrawl and ZenRows open source?

jevcrawl is open source (Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for ZenRows.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with jevcrawl or ZenRows

- [Apify MCP Server vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apify-mcp-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Bright Data vs jevcrawl](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-jevcrawl.md)
- [Bright Data vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Context.dev vs jevcrawl](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/context-dev-vs-jevcrawl.md)
- [Context.dev vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/context-dev-vs-zenrows.md)
- [jevcrawl vs Jina Reader](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-jina-reader.md)
- [jevcrawl vs Oxylabs Web Scraper API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-oxylabs-web-scraper.md)
- [jevcrawl vs Scrape.do](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-scrape-do.md)
- [jevcrawl vs ScrapingAnt](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-scrapingant.md)
- [jevcrawl vs ScrapingBee](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-scrapingbee.md)
- [jevcrawl vs Scrapingdog](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-scrapingdog.md)
- [jevcrawl vs Zyte API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-zyte.md)
- [Jina Reader vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jina-reader-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Olostep vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-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)
- [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)
- [ZenRows vs Zyte API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/zenrows-vs-zyte.md)
- [Apify MCP Server vs jevcrawl](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apify-mcp-vs-jevcrawl.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs jevcrawl](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-jevcrawl.md)
- [jevcrawl vs Olostep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-olostep.md)
- [jevcrawl vs ScrapeGraphAI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-scrapegraphai.md)
- [jevcrawl vs Scrapeless](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-scrapeless.md)
- [jevcrawl vs ScraperAPI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-scraperapi.md)
- [jevcrawl vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-scrapfly.md)
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- [Diffbot vs jevcrawl](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-jevcrawl.md)
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