# ScrapeAtlas vs ZenRows

> ZenRows scores 78.9 (A) to ScrapeAtlas's 63 (B) for extraction. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-zenrows
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-zenrows.md (~2,800 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-zenrows.min.md (~780 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-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
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-10-30

ZenRows scores 78.9 (A) on agent readiness against ScrapeAtlas's 63 (B), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. ScrapeAtlas leads on security & auth. Both do extraction.

- ScrapeAtlas: grade B, 63/100, rank #481 of 1226. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/scrapeatlas.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/scrapeatlas.json
- ZenRows: grade A, 78.9/100, rank #13 of 1226. 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 242 scrapers comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/web-scrapers/index.md

## Which one, for what

### ScrapeAtlas (B)

Good for: Agents that need structured public data from a named social, video, forum, marketplace or prediction-market platform, such as a creator's profile and recent posts, a thread's comments, a product's reviews or a market's order book, paid per successful request without a subscription.

Ahead on:
- Security & auth, 55 against 50

Watch for: No status page or incident history was found, and the terms promise no uptime, throughput or continued availability of an endpoint

### ZenRows (A)

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 42
- Schema & documentation, 93 against 88
- Payments & pricing, 80 against 55
- Maintenance & community, 90 against 70
- Transparency & trust, 79 against 61

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- Runs on your own machine

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


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | ScrapeAtlas | ZenRows | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 42 | 87 | ZenRows +45 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 88 | 93 | ZenRows +5 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 76 | 79 | ZenRows +3 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 55 | 50 | ScrapeAtlas +5 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 55 | 80 | ZenRows +25 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 70 | 90 | ZenRows +20 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 61 | 79 | ZenRows +18 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **63 · B** | **78.9 · A** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | ScrapeAtlas | ZenRows |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | OD. Media & Technology LLC | ZenRows |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.scrapeatlas.com` | `https://api.zenrows.com/v1/` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | no | payer tooling only |
| Licence | Proprietary service under ScrapeAtlas's Terms of Service. The @scrapeatlas/cli package on npm is MIT with no public source repository | none |
| Tools exposed | 373 | 52 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.OnlineDopamine/scrapeatlas` | `io.github.ZenRows/zenrows-mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-10-28 | 2026-10-17 |
| Terms last updated |  | 2025-07-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated |  | 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 | none | 21 stars, 35k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.8/5 (8) |

## Verdicts

**ScrapeAtlas.** An OpenAPI 3.1 file with 386 operations, typed parameters and a uniform failure object, published limits of 120 requests a minute and 4 concurrent, and 1 credit per successful request with failed calls free. No status page, security.txt or SDKs, the MCP server is a preview with 373 tools, and the product is five weeks old.

**ZenRows.** No incidents in the 90 days to 17 October 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

### ScrapeAtlas

1. Send the key as `x-api-key` on https://api.scrapeatlas.com and check `status` on every HTTP 200; `partial` is usable data with `coverage.warnings`, `failed` and `challenged` carry `failure.code`.
2. Retry only on `upstream_rate_limited`, `timeout` and `busy`, after the `retry-after` on a 429. Stay under 120 requests a minute and 4 concurrent per account.
3. Pass the returned `cursor` back unchanged for the next page, and use `since` and `until` (ISO 8601 or Unix seconds) where listed; each page costs another credit.
4. Each platform has its own response schema, so read the endpoint's response fields before mapping; unknown values are `null`, never 0.
5. For MCP, connect to https://api.scrapeatlas.com/mcp over Streamable HTTP with `Authorization: Bearer` and expect 373 tools; the two account tools and failed calls cost 0 credits.

### 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. 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
5. Set ZENROWS_AUTO_SIGNUP=false in stdio configs so a missing key fails loudly instead of creating an account
6. Pass `idempotency_key` to `crawl_create` so a retried call returns the same crawl 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, ScrapeAtlas or ZenRows?

ZenRows scores 78.9 (A) on agent readiness against ScrapeAtlas's 63 (B), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. ScrapeAtlas leads on security & auth.

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

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

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

Yes. ScrapeAtlas has a hosted endpoint at https://api.scrapeatlas.com and ZenRows at https://api.zenrows.com/v1/.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with ScrapeAtlas or ZenRows

- [Apify MCP Server vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apify-mcp-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Bright Data vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Context.dev vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/context-dev-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)
- [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)
- [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)
- [ZenRows vs Zyte API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/zenrows-vs-zyte.md)
- [Context.dev vs ScrapeAtlas](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/context-dev-vs-scrapeatlas.md)
- [Diffbot vs ScrapeAtlas](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-scrapeatlas.md)
- [Diffbot vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/diffbot-vs-zenrows.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs ScrapeAtlas](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-scrapeatlas.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-zenrows.md)
- [jevcrawl vs ScrapeAtlas](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jevcrawl-vs-scrapeatlas.md)
- [Olostep vs ScrapeAtlas](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/olostep-vs-scrapeatlas.md)
- [Oxylabs Web Scraper API vs ScrapeAtlas](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/oxylabs-web-scraper-vs-scrapeatlas.md)
- [ScrapeAtlas vs ScrapeGraphAI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-scrapegraphai.md)
- [ScrapeAtlas vs ScraperAPI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-scraperapi.md)
- [ScrapeAtlas vs Scrapewise](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-scrapewise.md)
- [ScrapeAtlas vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-scrapfly.md)
- [ScrapeAtlas vs ScrapingAnt](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-scrapingant.md)
- [ScrapeAtlas vs ScrapingBee](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-scrapingbee.md)
- [ScrapeAtlas vs Scrapingdog](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-scrapingdog.md)
- [ScrapeAtlas vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [ScrapeAtlas vs Zyte API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapeatlas-vs-zyte.md)

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