What does a protected request cost on Zenrows and FourA?
On a $99 monthly plan, 1,000 protected requests cost $4.95 on Zenrows and $0.55 on FourA, and 1,000 plain ones cost $0.198 against $0.055. We read Zenrows' pricing docs, its pricing page and our own prices on 22 October 2026, and every figure here is in US dollars, billed monthly.
How does FourA price a request?
By the engine that ran it. Single costs 1 credit, or 2 with a browser profile (the unblocker parameter, on by default). Browser costs 5, and 10 only when a page asked for a verification step before its content and Browser completed it.
Startup is $99 a month for 1,800,000 credits on foura.ai/prices, as of 22 October 2026, which puts 1,000 credits at $0.055. Only a successful request is billed, and every response carries an X-FourA-Credits header with what that call spent.
How does Zenrows price the same requests?
Zenrows sells its plans in rungs, and Launch L2 is $99 a month for 500,000 credits, so 1,000 credits cost $0.198. A standard request takes 1 credit, JavaScript Rendering 5, Premium Proxies 10, and the two together, which Zenrows calls a protected request, 25. Its docs say those weights "are fixed and never change" on any plan, which makes the multiplier, not the plan price, the number to read.
Line the two up request by request, each side's option for protected sites included:
| Per 1,000 at $99 | Zenrows L2 | FourA Startup |
|---|---|---|
| Plain HTTP | $0.198 | $0.055 |
| HTTP, protected | $1.98 | $0.11 |
| Rendered | $0.99 | $0.275 |
| Rendered, protected | $4.95 | $0.55 |
Why FourA comes out ahead here
Plain against plain, a Zenrows standard request costs 3.6 times what Single does. The gap grows where sites fight back. Premium Proxies run $1.98 per 1,000 against $0.11 for Single with a browser profile, 18 times apart, and a protected request runs $4.95 against $0.55 for a Browser call that completed a verification step, 9 times apart.
And the order survives the unfair version of the test. Charge every FourA request its higher price and every Zenrows request its lower one: a Browser call with a verification step ($0.55) still costs less than Zenrows' JavaScript Rendering ($0.99), and a profiled Single ($0.11) less than its standard request ($0.198).
The cheapest paid rungs keep that order too. Zenrows' Build B1 is $19 for 45,000 credits, which works out to $0.42 per 1,000 plain requests and $10.56 per 1,000 protected ones. FourA's Developer is $29 for 300,000 credits: $0.097 per 1,000 on Single and $0.97 per 1,000 Browser calls that completed a verification step.
Zenrows deserves credit for how plainly it prices. Four weights sit in one table and stay put on every rung, a failed attempt costs nothing, and one balance pays for Fetch, Extract, Crawl, Batch and Browser Sessions alike.
Run the same request on FourA
Split last month's Zenrows usage by weight: how many requests ran at 1, 5, 10 and 25 credits. Price the 1s and 10s at 2 FourA credits and the 5s and 25s at 10, the most those requests can cost on Single and Browser. On Startup that ceiling is $0.11 per 1,000 plain requests and $0.55 per 1,000 rendered ones.
Frequently asked
How many protected pages does $99 buy? On Zenrows' Launch L2, 500,000 credits at 25 each make 20,000 protected requests a month. FourA's Startup credits cover 180,000 Browser calls at 10 credits, and the plan runs up to 5,000 Browser calls a day, so about 150,000 in a 30-day month.
Is a 404 billed the same way? No. Zenrows counts 404 and 410 answers as successful, so they spend credits, while a FourA request without validate rules succeeds only on HTTP 200 and a 404 costs nothing.
Your 25-credit URLs are the place to test it. Create a free account at auth.foura.ai/signup, send ten of them through Browser on the Free plan's 3,000 credits, and set each X-FourA-Credits header beside the 25 Zenrows charged.