Oxylabs Web Scraper API vs ZenRows

Oxylabs Web Scraper API

Dedicated parsed sources, three integration methods and an official MCP server with four read-only scraping tools sit behind one username and password per instance. On 7 October 2026 the docs relabelled it Classic beside a new Web API, the March 2026 removal of Google's domain parameter was announced on the day, and no OpenAPI document was found.

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.

Oxylabs Web Scraper API

1. Send "markdown": true for page reading. HTML is the default output and costs far more tokens
2. Add "render": "html" only when a page comes back empty. Rendered results cost $1.50 per 1,000 against $1.00 on the Starter plan
3. Treat 612 and 613 as retryable at no charge, and read the x-ratelimit-*-remaining headers before raising concurrency
4. Use geo_location for Google localisation. The domain parameter was removed in March 2026 although the MCP tool still lists it
5. Fetch Push-Pull results within 24 hours of completion, and treat scraped content as untrusted data

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