Track usage and control spend

Zenrows reports what every request costs, on the response itself, and lets you set limits per API key and per CLI run. This page shows how to read cost as you go, check your plan’s balance from code, and keep large jobs on the configuration that gets each page for the fewest credits. Uses: Fetch response headers, the plan usage endpoint, API key credit caps, Adaptive Stealth Mode (mode=auto), zenrows batch estimate and CLI policy

Ask your AI agent

With the Zenrows MCP server connected, paste this prompt. Checking usage is free.

Check my Zenrows credits. Tell me how many are left, when the billing period ends,
and whether this API key has any credit caps.

Read the cost of each request

Every Fetch response carries its cost. X-Request-Credits is the number of credits the request used, and X-Request-Cost is the same amount in US dollars.

import requests

params = {
    "apikey": "YOUR_ZENROWS_API_KEY",
    "url": "https://www.scrapingcourse.com/ecommerce/",
    "mode": "auto",
}

response = requests.get("https://api.zenrows.com/v1/", params=params, timeout=180)
response.raise_for_status()

print("Credits:", response.headers["X-Request-Credits"])
print("Cost (USD):", response.headers["X-Request-Cost"])
print("Request ID:", response.headers["X-Request-Id"])

const params = new URLSearchParams({
  apikey: "YOUR_ZENROWS_API_KEY",
  url: "https://www.scrapingcourse.com/ecommerce/",
  mode: "auto",
});

const response = await fetch(`https://api.zenrows.com/v1/?${params}`, {
  signal: AbortSignal.timeout(180_000),
});
if (!response.ok) throw new Error(`${response.status}: ${await response.text()}`);

console.log("Credits:", response.headers.get("X-Request-Credits"));
console.log("Cost (USD):", response.headers.get("X-Request-Cost"));
console.log("Request ID:", response.headers.get("X-Request-Id"));

curl -s -o /dev/null -D - "https://api.zenrows.com/v1/?apikey=YOUR_ZENROWS_API_KEY&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.scrapingcourse.com%2Fecommerce%2F&mode=auto" | grep -i "x-request"

zenrows fetch https://www.scrapingcourse.com/ecommerce/ --json | jq '{costCredits, costUsd}'

Example output

Credits: 1
Cost (USD): 0.001
Request ID: 6ad00d404582d23747335acdf4c3b65b

Log X-Request-Credits with each URL. Summed per domain, it shows which targets drive your spend.

Check your plan’s balance from code

GET /v1/subscriptions/self/details returns your plan’s usage. It is free and doesn’t count against your concurrency, so call it before a large run or on a schedule:

Python (Requests)

import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://api.zenrows.com/v1/subscriptions/self/details",
    headers={"X-API-Key": "YOUR_ZENROWS_API_KEY"},
    timeout=30,
)
response.raise_for_status()
details = response.json()

print(f"{details['usage_credits']} of {details['credit_limit']} credits used ({details['usage_percent']}%)")
print("Period ends:", details["period_ends_at"])
print("Key caps:", details.get("api_key", {}).get("caps", []))

# Usage per product, under plan.products
for key, product in details.get("plan", {}).get("products", {}).items():
    print(f"  {key}: {product.get('usage_credits', 0)} credits")

1649 of 5000 credits used (32%)
Period ends: 2026-11-14T23:01:31Z
Key caps: []
  api: 2 credits
  data_apis: 0 credits
  extract: 0 credits
  proxy_residential: 0 credits
  scraping_browser: 1647 credits

plan.products breaks the usage down by product key (api is Fetch, scraping_browser is Browser), and api_key.caps lists this key’s caps with their remaining credits and reset times. From the terminal, zenrows usage prints the same summary.

Choose the lightest configuration that gets the page

Each Fetch request costs credits by configuration:

Configuration	Credits per request
Basic request	1
`js_render=true`	5
`premium_proxy=true`	10
`js_render=true` and `premium_proxy=true`	25

mode=auto starts light, adds rendering and premium proxies only when a page needs them, and bills only the configuration that succeeds. For example, it billed 1 credit for the scrapingcourse.com catalog, 5 for an Amazon product page and 25 for a Google results page, each without any tuning. When you run the same domain at volume, read X-Request-Credits from a handful of mode=auto requests, and that’s the cost to plan for. Requests that don’t succeed aren’t charged, so retries cost only the attempt that succeeds.

block_resources controls which resource types the rendering browser loads. Zenrows already blocks images and stylesheets by default, so pages load fast without any setting. See Block resources before changing it.

Cap what each API key can spend

Give each project, environment or customer its own API key, and set credit caps per key on the API keys page: per billing period, daily, weekly or monthly. A key that reaches a cap returns 402 with AUTH014 while your other keys keep working. See API key credit caps. Responses from a capped key include X-Key-Credits-Remaining, the lowest remaining balance across its caps. Read it to slow down or switch keys before a cap is reached.

Estimate and cap jobs from the CLI

Before you submit a Batch job, estimate it locally. The estimate is a ceiling: tasks in Adaptive Stealth Mode count at 25 credits each, and each task bills only what it actually uses.

CLI

zenrows batch estimate jobs.jsonl

Job spec: jobs.jsonl
valid jobs: 3/3
estimated credits, upper bound (1x basic / 5x js / 10x proxy / 25x both or auto): 75
✓ Spec is valid.

Set a cap per run in the workspace policy. The CLI checks every batch create against it before any cloud call:

CLI

zenrows policy set max_credits_per_run 50
zenrows batch create jobs.jsonl

✗ [POLICY_LIMIT_EXCEEDED] This batch is estimated at 75 credit(s), over the policy cap of 50.
  cause: policy.max_credits_per_run bounds the estimated credit cost of a single run.

max_pages_per_run bounds how many URLs one batch submits and how many pages one crawl fetches. See all keys with zenrows policy show. After a job runs, its real spend is in the job’s stats: zenrows batch status <job-id> --json returns stats.spend.credits. The three-task job estimated above billed 3 credits.

Customize it

Change	How
Bound a crawl’s cost	Set `max_pages`, see Crawl endpoints
Bound a Browser session’s cost	Close sessions as soon as the task ends, see Browser
Alerts before credits run out	Manage email alerts in notifications
Plans and credit prices	See Pricing

Troubleshooting

AUTH004 (402): the plan’s credits for this period are used. Check period_ends_at, then top up or upgrade to continue now. See AUTH004.
AUTH014 (402): this key reached one of its caps. Raise the cap or wait for its window to reset. See AUTH014.
POLICY_LIMIT_EXCEEDED in the CLI: the job’s estimate is above your max_credits_per_run. Split the job, raise the cap, or use --manual with only the options the site needs.
A domain costs more than you planned: it needs rendering and premium proxies on its pages. Keep mode=auto so each page uses only what it needs, and send only the URLs you need, for example by filtering a crawl with include_patterns.

Resolve common response codes

Symptom-to-fix for 422, 429, 402 and more.

Automate scraping from your terminal with the CLI

Batch, crawl and trace runs from the CLI.

Scrape a list of URLs

Run thousands of URLs as one Batch job.

Scrape pages protected by anti-bot systems

Let Adaptive Stealth Mode pick the right configuration per page.

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Production

Track usage and control spend

Ask your AI agent

Read the cost of each request

Example output

Check your plan’s balance from code

Choose the lightest configuration that gets the page

Cap what each API key can spend

Estimate and cap jobs from the CLI

Customize it

Troubleshooting

Resolve common response codes

Automate scraping from your terminal with the CLI

Scrape a list of URLs

Scrape pages protected by anti-bot systems

​Ask your AI agent

​Read the cost of each request

​Example output

​Check your plan’s balance from code

​Choose the lightest configuration that gets the page

​Cap what each API key can spend

​Estimate and cap jobs from the CLI

​Customize it

​Troubleshooting

​Related recipes

Resolve common response codes

Automate scraping from your terminal with the CLI

Scrape a list of URLs

Scrape pages protected by anti-bot systems

Ask your AI agent

Read the cost of each request

Example output

Check your plan’s balance from code

Choose the lightest configuration that gets the page

Cap what each API key can spend

Estimate and cap jobs from the CLI

Customize it

Troubleshooting

Related recipes