Firecrawl vs ScraperAPI: LLM-ready pages or raw HTML at volume?
Published prices compared, with the arithmetic shown. Last checked . Prices only: we have not tested reliability, speed or output quality.
At a glance
| Firecrawl | ScraperAPI | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | scraping apis | scraping apis |
| Free tier | 1,000 credits/month, no card (about 1,000 pages or 500 searches), 2 concurrent requests. | 1,000 free credits/month (max 5 concurrent) per the FAQ; 7-day trial with 5,000 credits. |
| Entry paid price | from $19/mo | from $49/mo |
| MCP / agent support | Yes | Yes |
| Verification | full verification | partial verification |
| Official pricing page | Pricing (opens official site in a new tab) | Pricing (opens official site in a new tab) |
| Visit vendor | Try Firecrawl Sponsored / affiliate link (opens in a new tab) Firecrawl official site (plain link) (opens official site in a new tab) Affiliate link: FetchIndex may earn a commission. Disclosure | Official site (opens official site in a new tab) |
Analysis
Firecrawl and ScraperAPI both sit between you and the target site, but they bill differently. Firecrawl: 1 credit = 1 page on basic scrape/crawl/map. ScraperAPI: Per the pricing FAQ: standard page = 1 credit; Amazon = 5; Google & Bing = 25; LinkedIn = 30; sites behind Cloudflare/Datadome/PerimeterX add +10 credits per request. On published numbers ScraperAPI's lowest plain-page rate is $0.095 per 1,000 against Firecrawl's $0.599, but the two return different things (Firecrawl returns LLM-ready markdown/JSON; check ScraperAPI's output options on its own docs) so a lower per-page price does not remove post-processing you may need to do yourself.
Estimated monthly cost at three volumes
Computed with the same model as the cost calculator: the cheapest published plan that covers the volume, including published overage rates. Plans that require annual billing are included and labelled (monthly equivalent). Free tiers are not subtracted. Prices only; neither number says anything about success rate.
| Requests / month | Firecrawl | ScraperAPI | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000 | $41.00 Hobby (annual billing) | $44.10 Hobby (annual billing) | Firecrawl cheaper by $3.10 (1.08x) |
| 100,000 | $83.00 Standard (annual billing) | $44.10 Hobby (annual billing) | ScraperAPI cheaper by $38.90 (1.9x) |
| 1,000,000 | $599 Scale (annual billing) | $149 Startup | ScraperAPI cheaper by $450 (4.0x) |
Where the cheaper option changes (Basic page fetch). On our volume grid (1,000 to 10,000,000 requests per month), at 1,000 to 10,000 requests per month Firecrawl is cheaper; at 30,000 to 3,000,000 requests per month ScraperAPI is cheaper; at 10,000,000 requests per month only Firecrawl has a published plan that covers the volume (the other publishes no overage or larger plan we can model).
Try your own volume in the calculator to see all vendors side by side.
Free tiers and how units are counted
- Firecrawl: 1,000 credits/month, no card (about 1,000 pages or 500 searches), 2 concurrent requests. Units: 1 credit = 1 page on basic scrape/crawl/map. Search = 2 credits / 10 results. Interact = 2 credits / browser minute. JSON, Question and Highlight formats add 4 credits per page. A 403/404 response that is returned still costs 1 credit; a scrape that returns no result is not charged.
- ScraperAPI: 1,000 free credits/month (max 5 concurrent) per the FAQ; 7-day trial with 5,000 credits. Units: Per the pricing FAQ: standard page = 1 credit; Amazon = 5; Google & Bing = 25; LinkedIn = 30; sites behind Cloudflare/Datadome/PerimeterX add +10 credits per request. Credits do not roll over.
Firecrawl tends to fit
- RAG ingestion of whole sites
- Agents that need scrape + crawl + search from one balance
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.
ScraperAPI tends to fit
- Simple 'send URL, get HTML' scraping at modest volume
- Teams that value predictable monthly credit plans
Watch-outs
- Credit cost varies by domain: Google SERP = 25 credits, bot-protected sites 11+.
- Credits reset monthly with no rollover.
- Use the dashboard's Domain Cost Estimator before committing.
Budget view
| Use case | Monthly spend | Firecrawl | ScraperAPI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic page fetch | up to $50/mo | $3.20 Hobby (annual) | $0.441 Hobby (annual) |
| Basic page fetch | up to $100/mo | $0.83 Standard (annual) | $0.441 Hobby (annual) |
| Basic page fetch | up to $500/mo | $0.666 Growth (annual) | $0.095 Scaling |
| Basic page fetch | any budget | $0.599 Scale (annual) | $0.095 Scaling |
Also see: alternatives to Firecrawl and alternatives to ScraperAPI. Run a small trial on your own target sites before committing: published price says nothing about success rate on hard sites.
Price ladders from the data
Effective price per unit at each published plan (monthly spend shown). Overage and assumption-based rows are excluded here; see each vendor page.
Basic page fetch
Firecrawl
- $3.20 Hobby (annual) · $16/mo
- $3.80 Hobby · $19/mo
- $0.83 Standard (annual) · $83/mo
- $0.666 Growth (annual) · $333/mo
- $0.599 Scale (annual) · $599/mo
ScraperAPI
- $0.441 Hobby (annual) · $44.1/mo
- $0.49 Hobby · $49/mo
- $0.149 Startup · $149/mo
- $0.0997 Business · $299/mo
- $0.095 Scaling · $475/mo
What we could not verify
- Firecrawl: 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).
- ScraperAPI: Credit multiplier for JavaScript rendering not stated on the pricing page/FAQ.; Per-credit PAYG rate for Scaling and above is not published.; Bonus-credit offer makes included credits ambiguous; not normalized.