Firecrawl Alternatives (2026): Open Source, No-Code, Anti-Bot and Search APIs Compared

Short answer: for a free, self-hosted replacement, use Crawl4AI, an Apache-2.0 crawler that outputs Markdown for LLMs. To turn one URL into clean text with no setup, prefix it with Jina Reader, which is free for basic use. For large jobs on sites that block bots, Apify, Bright Data and Zyte handle proxies and unblocking for you. If you mostly need web search results for an agent, Tavily or Exa fit better than a crawler. If nobody on the team writes code, Browse AI is the no-code option. Updated November 9, 2026.

How we checked: plans, prices, credits, limits and licenses come from each vendor's own pricing page, documentation or GitHub repository, read November 9, 2026: Firecrawl, Crawl4AI, Jina Reader, Apify, ScrapingBee, Bright Data, Zyte, Tavily, Exa, Browserbase and Browse AI. Where a page does not state something, the table says "Not stated". We did not test these tools hands-on; the cost-per-page figures are our arithmetic from the published plans. For the wider category, see our web scraping tools for AI agents roundup.

Firecrawl turns web pages into Markdown or structured JSON for LLMs. It can scrape one page, crawl a whole site, map URLs and run a web search, all through one API. Its plans, from its pricing page:

• Free: 1,000 credits a month, 2 concurrent requests, no card required.
• Hobby: $19 a month for 5,000 credits, 5 concurrent requests.
• Standard: $99 a month for 100,000 credits, 25 concurrent requests.
• Growth: $399 a month for 500,000 credits, 50 concurrent requests.
• Scale: $749 a month for 1,000,000 credits, 100 concurrent requests. Annual billing lowers each paid plan (Standard is $83 a month billed yearly).

A scraped or crawled page costs 1 credit. Asking for JSON output adds 4 credits a page, so structured extraction costs five times a plain scrape. Search costs 2 credits per 10 results. On Standard, plain Markdown works out to about $0.99 per 1,000 pages; JSON extraction to about $4.95 per 1,000.

Firecrawl is open source under AGPL-3.0, according to its GitHub repository, and has a self-hosting guide. The README says the cloud version "includes additional features" beyond the open-source code. The reasons people look elsewhere are usually one of these:

• License: AGPL-3.0 has obligations some companies avoid when they modify and run the code as a service. Apache-2.0 alternatives do not carry them.
• Cost at volume: JSON extraction at 5 credits a page adds up fast on a large crawl.
• Hard targets: sites with heavy bot protection, where a dedicated proxy and unblocking vendor may get through more often.
• Wrong shape of tool: some teams need search results, a real browser session or a no-code robot, not a page-to-Markdown API.

Crawl4AI is the closest like-for-like swap if you want to run the crawler yourself. Its GitHub repository lists an Apache-2.0 license and about 87,100 stars. It turns pages into Markdown with headings, tables and code kept, and can extract structured JSON. You install it with pip install -U crawl4ai or run the Docker image.

There is also a hosted Crawl4AI Cloud. The README lists 1,000 free credits a month with no card and "plans from $10", pay as you go; it points to the docs for live prices.

• Pick it if: you can run Python or Docker, want no per-page bill, or need a permissive license.
• Not for: teams without anyone to run servers, or targets that need rotating residential proxies. You bring your own.

Jina Reader is the lowest-effort option. Put https://r.jina.ai/ in front of any URL and you get LLM-ready text back. Basic use needs no API key. Its page lists 20 requests a minute without a key and 500 a minute with a free or paid key, and every new key comes with 10 million free tokens. Paid use is billed by tokens processed; the per-token price is Not stated on the Reader page. A search endpoint, s.jina.ai, returns the top five results with their contents and needs a key.

• Pick it if: your agent fetches single pages on demand and you want zero setup.
• Not for: crawling a whole site, scheduled jobs or structured extraction at volume.

Apify is a platform for running scrapers, called Actors, in the cloud. Plans on its pricing page are Free ($5 of usage a month), Starter ($19), Scale ($199) and Business ($999), each with that amount of usage included. Concurrent runs go from 5 on Free to 256 on Business.

The Actor that maps most directly to Firecrawl is Website Content Crawler, which crawls a site and saves Markdown, text or HTML for RAG pipelines. Its page estimates $0.20 per 1,000 pages with the plain HTTP crawler and $0.50 to $5 per 1,000 pages with a headless browser, depending on the site.

• Pick it if: you need big crawls, scheduling, or a pre-built scraper for a specific site.
• Not for: a simple per-page API call. Compute-based billing is harder to predict than a flat credit.

ScrapingBee is a scraping API that handles headless browsers and proxies. Its pricing page runs from Hobby ($19 for 75,000 credits) through Startup ($99 for 1,000,000 credits) to Enterprise tiers up to $5,799 a month. A request with JavaScript rendering costs 5 credits, and premium proxies cost 10 or 25. Trial: 1,000 free credits, no card.

On Startup, 1,000,000 credits buys 200,000 JavaScript-rendered pages, about $0.50 per 1,000. That is roughly half of Firecrawl's Standard rate per page. The trade-off: ScrapingBee returns the page, and turning it into clean Markdown is more of your job.

• Pick it if: you scrape many pages and can handle cleanup in your own code.
• Not for: teams that want LLM-ready Markdown or site crawls out of the box.

Bright Data is best known for its proxy network. Its Web Scraper API returns structured records from pre-built scrapers. Per its pricing page: a free tier of 5,000 records a month, pay as you go at $1.50 per 1,000 records (you pay only for successful deliveries), and Scale at $499 a month for 384,000 records, then $1.30 per 1,000. Enterprise is custom.

• Pick it if: your targets block ordinary scrapers, or you want structured data from big sites without writing parsers.
• Not for: small projects or one-off page reads. It is more platform than most AI side projects need.

Zyte prices its API per 1,000 successful responses, in five tiers by how hard the site is to scrape. On pay as you go, a plain HTTP response runs from $0.13 (Simple) to $1.27 (Advanced) per 1,000, and a browser-rendered one from $1.01 to $16.08. Monthly commitments of $100, $200 or $500 lower those rates; at $500, the floor is $0.06 per 1,000. New accounts get $5 of free credit for 30 days.

• Pick it if: you want to pay only for responses that worked, with easy sites priced cheaply.
• Not for: budgeting in advance on unknown sites, since the tier depends on the site.

Many agents use Firecrawl mainly for its search endpoint. A search API built for LLMs may suit that job better.

Tavily gives 1,000 free credits a month, then $0.008 a credit pay as you go, or a $30 Project plan with 4,000 credits (pricing). Its credit docs say a basic search costs 1 credit and an advanced search 2; extract costs 1 credit per 5 URLs, and crawling 10 pages with basic extraction costs 3 credits.

Exa is pay as you go with no minimum (pricing). Search costs $4 per 1,000 requests on lite or instant and $7 on auto or fast, with up to 10 results included. Page contents cost $1 per 1,000 pages. New accounts get $10 of credits, which resets each month. A crawling price is Not stated.

• Pick them if: your agent asks questions of the web rather than reading a known list of URLs.
• Not for: crawling an entire site you already know.

Browserbase hosts headless browsers that your code or agent controls, for pages that need logins, clicks or forms. Its pricing: Free (1 browser hour, 3 concurrent browsers), Developer ($20 a month, 100 hours, 25 concurrent), Startup ($99 a month, 500 hours, 100 concurrent), and custom Scale. Extra hours cost $0.12 or $0.10; proxy data is included up to 1 or 5 GB, then $12 or $10 per GB.

• Pick it if: pages need interaction before the content appears.
• Not for: bulk Markdown extraction. You still write the scraping logic.

Browse AI lets you train a robot by clicking on a page, then run it on a schedule and send the data to a spreadsheet. Per its pricing page: Free has 50 credits a month and 2 websites. Personal is $48 monthly or $19 a month billed yearly (12,000 credits a year, 5 websites). Professional is $87 monthly or $69 a month billed yearly (60,000 credits a year, 10 websites). Premium starts at $500 a month.

• Pick it if: a non-developer needs to track prices, listings or changes on a few sites.
• Not for: feeding an LLM pipeline through an API at volume. Firecrawl and Crawl4AI are built for that.

• You want to stop paying per page: Crawl4AI, self-hosted. Firecrawl's own open-source version is also an option if AGPL-3.0 is fine for you.
• You read one page at a time: Jina Reader, free without a key.
• You crawl millions of pages: Apify for ready-made crawlers, or ScrapingBee if cost per page matters most.
• Sites block you: Bright Data or Zyte.
• Your agent searches the web: Tavily or Exa.
• Pages need clicks or logins: Browserbase.
• No developer on the team: Browse AI.
• You want one API for scrape, crawl, search and JSON: staying on Firecrawl is reasonable. Few alternatives cover all four.

What is the best free alternative to Firecrawl?

Crawl4AI is free and open source under Apache-2.0, and turns pages into Markdown for LLMs. You run it yourself with Python or Docker. For single pages, Jina Reader is free for basic use without an API key.

Is Firecrawl open source?

Yes. Firecrawl's GitHub repository lists it under AGPL-3.0, with a self-hosting guide. The README says the hosted cloud version includes additional features.

How much does Firecrawl cost per page?

A scraped or crawled page costs 1 credit, and JSON output adds 4 credits. On the $99 Standard plan (100,000 credits) that is about $0.99 per 1,000 plain pages, or about $4.95 per 1,000 pages with JSON. The free plan gives 1,000 credits a month.

Which Firecrawl alternative handles sites that block scrapers?

Bright Data and Zyte focus on unblocking. Bright Data's Web Scraper API costs $1.50 per 1,000 records pay as you go, and Zyte charges $0.13 to $16.08 per 1,000 responses pay as you go, depending on how hard the site is.