Firecrawl alternatives: 6 options compared on published price
Scrape, crawl, map and search the web into LLM-ready markdown/JSON. Looking for something different? These are the vendors in our data closest to Firecrawl by product type and shared price metrics, compared on published prices checked . Prices only, not quality.
full verification from $19/mo MCP: Yes · Firecrawl full pricing page
What to weigh about Firecrawl first
Drawn from the Firecrawl record on this site: its published watch-outs and the figures we could not verify.
Watch-outs
- Credits are shared across endpoints, so JSON-format extraction (+4 credits) can quintuple the per-page cost.
- A returned 403/404 still costs 1 credit.
Could not verify
- Stealth/enhanced proxy credit cost is not stated on the pricing page; not computed.
- Monthly-billed prices not shown on the page (only annual-billed).
Alternatives at a glance
How these were chosen: a fixed rule counts the price metrics both vendors publish plus category overlap. The order is by that score. It is not by price, popularity or commercial relationship; FetchIndex has an affiliate relationship with Firecrawl only (disclosure).
| Alternative | Category | Shared price metrics | Free tier | MCP / agent support | Verification | Head-to-head |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exa alternatives to Exa | Search & SERP APIs | AI/agent search query, URL to LLM-ready content | $10 of credits every month plus a $10 onboarding bonus, no payment method. | Yes | full verification | no head-to-head page |
| Tavily alternatives to Tavily | Search & SERP APIs | AI/agent search query, URL to LLM-ready content | 1,000 API credits/month, no card. Free for students; 100k free credits advertised for startup-program applicants. | Yes | full verification | Firecrawl vs Tavily |
| Browserbase alternatives to Browserbase | Browser infrastructure | Basic page fetch, AI/agent search query | Free plan: 1 browser hour, 3 concurrent browsers, 1,000 search and 1,000 fetch calls, $5 in model tokens. | Yes | full verification | no head-to-head page |
| Hyperbrowser alternatives to Hyperbrowser | Browser infrastructure | Basic page fetch, AI/agent search query | 5,000 credits included with a free account (~50 browser hours or 5,000 fetched pages). | Yes | full verification | no head-to-head page |
| Jina Reader alternatives to Jina Reader | Scraping APIs | AI/agent search query | No-key Reader at 20 RPM; new API keys come with 10M free tokens. | Yes | partial verification | Firecrawl vs Jina Reader |
| ScraperAPI alternatives to ScraperAPI | Scraping APIs | Basic page fetch | 1,000 free credits/month (max 5 concurrent) per the FAQ; 7-day trial with 5,000 credits. | Yes | partial verification | Firecrawl vs ScraperAPI |
Price comparison by use case
Basic page fetch
| Vendor | Lowest published price | Plan / rate | Monthly spend needed | Compared with Firecrawl |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ScraperAPI | $0.095 per 1,000 | Scaling | $475/mo | 6.3x cheaper |
| Browserbase | $0.50 per 1,000 | Startup (Fetch API) | $99/mo | 1.2x cheaper |
| Firecrawl | $0.599 per 1,000 | Scale | $599/mo | this vendor |
| Hyperbrowser | $1.00 per 1,000 | All plans (Fetch) | none | 1.7x more expensive |
AI/agent search query
| Vendor | Lowest published price | Plan / rate | Monthly spend needed | Compared with Firecrawl |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jina Reader | $0.50 per 1,000 | $50 pack (s.jina.ai minimum) | none | 3.3x cheaper |
| Browserbase | $1.00 per 1,000 | Parallel Fast | $20/mo | 1.7x cheaper |
| Firecrawl | $1.66 per 1,000 | Standard | $83/mo | this vendor |
| Exa | $4.00 per 1,000 | Instant search | none | 2.4x more expensive |
| Hyperbrowser | $5.00 per 1,000 | All plans | none | 3.0x more expensive |
| Tavily | $5.00 per 1,000 | Growth | $500/mo | 3.0x more expensive |
URL to LLM-ready content
| Vendor | Lowest published price | Plan / rate | Monthly spend needed | Compared with Firecrawl |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Firecrawl | $0.83 per 1,000 | Standard | $83/mo | this vendor |
| Exa | $1.00 per 1,000 | Contents (per content type) | none | 1.2x more expensive |
| Tavily | $1.00 per 1,000 | Growth | $500/mo | 1.2x more expensive |
Estimated monthly cost at example volumes
Basic page fetch, using the cost calculator model: cheapest published plan that covers each volume, including published overage rates. Free tiers are not subtracted. Open the calculator with these inputs.
| Requests / month | Firecrawl | Browserbase | Hyperbrowser | ScraperAPI |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000 | $41.00 Hobby (annual billing) | $29.00 Developer (Fetch API) | $10.00 All plans (Fetch) | $44.10 Hobby (annual billing) |
| 100,000 | $83.00 Standard (annual billing) | $119 Developer (Fetch API) | $100 All plans (Fetch) | $44.10 Hobby (annual billing) |
| 1,000,000 | $599 Scale (annual billing) | $594 Startup (Fetch API) | $1,000 All plans (Fetch) | $149 Startup |
Which alternative fits which job
- Exa: Neural search API with page contents, agentic research runs and monitors. Tends to fit: Semantic/neural search for agents and coding assistants. Watch-out: Contents and summaries bill separately from search.
- Tavily: Search, extract, map, crawl and research API built for LLM agents and RAG. Tends to fit: RAG and agent web search with citations/answers. Watch-out: Advanced search is 2 credits, so effective price doubles.
- Browserbase: Cloud headless browsers for agents, with Fetch and Search APIs. Tends to fit: Agents that must click, log in and fill forms. Watch-out: Pay for browser time, not pages: slow pages cost more.
- Hyperbrowser: Cloud browsers, sandboxes, a Fetch/Search web API and agent runners on a shared credit balance. Tends to fit: Cheap browser hours and a built-in Fetch API. Watch-out: Proxy data at $10/GB bills on top of browser time.
- Jina Reader: Prefix a URL with r.jina.ai to get LLM-friendly text; s.jina.ai for search. Tends to fit: Quick URL-to-markdown for LLM context. Watch-out: Commercial use of free tokens may be restricted; read the terms.
- ScraperAPI: Proxy-rotating scraping API billed in API credits, with per-domain credit costs. Tends to fit: Simple 'send URL, get HTML' scraping at modest volume. Watch-out: Credit cost varies by domain: Google SERP = 25 credits, bot-protected sites 11+.
When Firecrawl is still the better choice
- RAG ingestion of whole sites
- Agents that need scrape + crawl + search from one balance
Frequently asked questions
What is the cheapest alternative to Firecrawl?
For basic page fetch, ScraperAPI has the lowest published price among the alternatives listed: $0.095 per 1,000 (Scaling) versus $0.599 for Firecrawl (Scale). That is price only: check reliability on your own targets, and note the cheapest plan can require a larger monthly spend.
Is there a free alternative to Firecrawl?
Alternatives with a recurring free tier in our data: Exa ($10 of credits every month plus a $10 onboarding bonus, no payment method); Tavily (1,000 API credits/month, no card. Free for students; 100k free credits advertised for startup-program applicants); ScraperAPI (1,000 free credits/month (max 5 concurrent) per the FAQ; 7-day trial with 5,000 credits). Free-tier limits change often; check the vendor page.
Which Firecrawl alternatives support MCP?
Firecrawl: yes. Alternatives with a documented MCP server in our data: Exa, Tavily, Browserbase, Hyperbrowser, Jina Reader, ScraperAPI.
Keep exploring
- Firecrawl pricing
- Scraping APIs
- Cost calculator
- Which tool?
- Firecrawl vs Crawl4AI
- Firecrawl vs Jina Reader
- Firecrawl vs Scrapfly
- Firecrawl vs ZenRows
- Tavily vs Firecrawl
- Firecrawl vs ScraperAPI
- Firecrawl vs Apify
- Firecrawl vs ScrapingBee
Use-case guides
Corrections welcome: [email protected]. Each vendor page lists the official sources used.