ZenRows Charges One Rate for Everything. AlterLab Doesn't.
Why pay for heavy anti-bot bypass on pages that don't need it? AlterLab's 5-tier routing automatically picks the cheapest approach — then escalates only if needed. No subscriptions, balance never expires.
Why developers leave ZenRows
Real pain points from developers who switched to AlterLab
Paying Full Price for Simple Pages
ZenRows charges the same rate whether you're hitting a static blog or a Cloudflare-protected e-commerce site. With AlterLab's tier routing, simple pages use Tier 1 ($0.0002) and only escalate to heavier tiers when actually needed — automatically.
Monthly Subscriptions for Irregular Use
Scraping demand isn't constant. ZenRows' subscription model means you pay $49–$249/month even during quiet periods. AlterLab charges per request with balance that never expires — perfect for projects with variable volume.
No Structured Output Without Extra Work
ZenRows returns raw HTML — you parse it yourself. AlterLab extracts structured JSON and Markdown natively, making it the better choice for AI pipelines and data pipelines that need clean output without custom parsers.
No Auto-Escalation on Failures
When ZenRows fails on a protected page, you retry manually at higher cost. AlterLab automatically escalates through tiers on failure — so your pipeline keeps running without engineering intervention.
Every feature, side by side
See exactly how AlterLab compares to ZenRows across all key features
Same features, 78% less
Get the same capabilities at a fraction of the cost. Start with 5,000 free scrapes — no credit card required.
See How Much You Save
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See AlterLab in action
One endpoint. Any website. Results in under 2 seconds. No ZenRows complexity.
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No credit card required. Get your API key in 30 seconds.
Switch from ZenRows in 5-10 minutes
Simple easy migration process. No downtime, no complex setup.
Migration Steps
Code Migration Example
# ZenRows: GET with query parameters
curl "https://api.zenrows.com/v1/?apikey=YOUR_KEY&url=https://example.com&js_render=true"# AlterLab: POST with JSON body
curl -X POST https://api.alterlab.io/api/v1/scrape \
-H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"url": "https://example.com", "formats": ["html"]}'Compatibility Notes
- •AlterLab uses POST JSON vs ZenRows' GET query-string — update your HTTP client accordingly
- •Authentication: use X-API-Key header instead of the apikey query parameter
- •JS rendering is automatic in Tier 2+ — no separate js_render=true flag needed
- •All response formats (HTML, Markdown, JSON) are natively supported
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Frequently Asked Questions
More Comparisons
See how AlterLab stacks up against other scraping APIs
10x cost multipliers
Expiring monthly balance
75x cost for hard sites
Complex enterprise tooling
19,000+ Actors to manage
Confusing token types
Enterprise complexity
Drop ZenRows, keep your budget
5,000 free requests. No credit card. Migrate from ZenRows in under 5 minutes.