# Scrapingdog vs ZenRows

> ZenRows has a score of 75.1 (BB) against Scrapingdog's 39.3 (E). Both do scraping. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 42 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapingdog-vs-zenrows
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapingdog-vs-zenrows.md (~1,650 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapingdog-vs-zenrows.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scrapingdog-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
- Updated: 2026-10-05

ZenRows has a score of 75.1 (BB) against Scrapingdog's 39.3 (E). Both do scraping. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 42 points.

- Scrapingdog: grade E, 39.3/100, rank #425 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/scrapingdog.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/scrapingdog.json
- ZenRows: grade BB, 75.1/100, rank #43 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/zenrows.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/zenrows.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Scrapingdog for nothing in particular (no category where it leads by five points or more).

Pick ZenRows for reliability (+25), schema & documentation (+40), agent ergonomics (+35), security & auth (+36), payments & pricing (+40), maintenance & community (+42), transparency & trust (+18).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Scrapingdog | ZenRows | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 62 | 87 | ZenRows +25 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 43 | 83 | ZenRows +40 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 44 | 79 | ZenRows +35 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 5 | 41 | ZenRows +36 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 80 | ZenRows +40 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 45 | 87 | ZenRows +42 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 57 | 75 | ZenRows +18 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -2 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **39.3 · E** | **75.1 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Scrapingdog | ZenRows |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Scrapingdog (OpenData Labs) | ZenRows |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.scrapingdog.com/scrape` | `https://api.zenrows.com/v1/` |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | payer tooling only |
| Licence | none | none |
| Tools exposed | 35 | 44 |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.Darshan972/scrapingdog-mcp` | `io.github.ZenRows/zenrows-mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-07-31 | 2026-09-18 |
| Popularity | 0 stars, 41 npm/wk, 12 PyPI/wk | 21 stars, 35k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | 3.8/5 (8) |

## Verdicts

**Scrapingdog.** A plain request is 1 credit, about $0.20 per 1,000 on Lite. API key only travels in the URL query string.

**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

### Scrapingdog

1. Add dynamic=false unless the page needs JavaScript. It cuts the cost from 5 credits to 1, whatever the MCP description says
2. Keep request URLs out of logs, since they carry api_key
3. Set client timeouts above 60 seconds and retry on 429 or timeout. Failures aren't billed
4. Prefer the parsed endpoints (Google, Amazon) over scraping the raw page when one exists

### 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

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