Firecrawl Alternatives: 7 Better and Cheaper Scraping APIs for AI in 2026

Firecrawl has become the default choice for AI-powered web scraping, but it's not the only option — and for many teams, it's not the best one either. At $83/month for the Standard plan (100K credits), costs rack up quickly when you're building data pipelines or AI agents that scrape at scale.

After testing the major alternatives over the past month, here are the 7 Firecrawl alternatives worth your time in 2026, ranked by developer experience, pricing, and feature completeness.

Key Takeaways

• SearchHive ScrapeForge gives you scraping + search + extraction in one API for less than half Firecrawl's price
• Jina Reader is the best free option for converting URLs to clean markdown — simple and fast
• ScrapeGraphAI is the strongest open-source option if you want full control and zero vendor lock-in
• Apify is the right call for complex workflows that need scheduling, storage, and orchestration
• Crawl4AI is a solid self-hosted alternative for teams that want to run everything in-house

Why Look Beyond Firecrawl?

Firecrawl does one thing well: convert web pages into clean, structured data for LLM consumption. The /scrape endpoint returns markdown. The /crawl endpoint handles site-wide extraction. The /extract endpoint uses LLMs to pull structured data from pages.

The problem is pricing and scope:

• Free tier is one-time 500 credits — no monthly replenishment
• Standard plan is $83/month (billed yearly) for 100K credits
• Growth plan jumps to $333/month (yearly) for 500K credits
• Scraping-only — no search API, no SERP data
• No built-in proxy management — you handle geo-targeting yourself

If you're building an AI application, you probably need search results AND page content AND structured extraction. Firecrawl handles one of those three.

7 Firecrawl Alternatives

1. SearchHive ScrapeForge — Best Overall for AI Apps

SearchHive bundles three products in one API: SwiftSearch (SERP data), ScrapeForge (page scraping), and DeepDive (AI-powered extraction). For AI applications, this means one SDK, one API key, and one invoice.

Pricing: Free (500 credits/month), Starter $9/mo (5K), Builder $49/mo (100K), Unicorn $199/mo (500K). Credits work across all products.

ScrapeForge handles JavaScript rendering, returns clean markdown with metadata, and works at 17ms average latency according to their uptime dashboard.

from searchhive import ScrapeForge

client = ScrapeForge(api_key="sh_live_...")

# Scrape a single page — returns markdown + metadata
result = client.scrape(
    url="https://example.com/blog/post",
    format="markdown",
    extract_metadata=True
)

print(result["markdown"][:500])
print(f"Title: {result['metadata']['title']}")
print(f"Word count: {result['metadata']['word_count']}")

For AI agents, the MCP integration is a killer feature:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "searchhive": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["@searchhive/mcp-server"],
      "env": {"SEARCHHIVE_API_KEY": "sh_live_..."}
    }
  }
}

Why it's better than Firecrawl: Same scraping quality at less than half the cost on equivalent plans. Plus you get search and extraction without paying for separate services.

/compare/firecrawl

2. Jina Reader — Best Free Option

Jina Reader converts any URL to clean markdown via a simple API call. It's free, fast, and has no signup requirement for basic usage.

Pricing: Free tier with rate limits. Paid plans start at $20/month for higher throughput.

import requests

# Append the URL to the reader endpoint
resp = requests.get(
    "https://r.jina.ai/https://example.com/blog/post",
    headers={"Accept": "text/markdown"}
)
print(resp.text[:1000])

Best for: Quick prototyping, scripts, and applications that need markdown conversion without authentication overhead.

Limitations: No JavaScript rendering for complex SPAs. No structured extraction. Rate limits are aggressive on the free tier.

3. ScrapeGraphAI — Best Open-Source Option

ScrapeGraphAI uses LLMs to build scraping pipelines from natural language descriptions. Open-source and self-hosted.

Pricing: Free (open source, Apache 2.0). You pay for your own LLM API costs.

from scrapegraphai.graphs import SmartScraperGraph

graph = SmartScraperGraph(
    prompt="Extract the article title, author, and publication date",
    source="https://example.com/blog/post",
    config={
        "llm": {"model": "gpt-4o-mini", "api_key": "YOUR_KEY"},
        "verbose": True
    }
)

result = graph.run()
print(result)

Best for: Teams that want full control, zero vendor lock-in, and are comfortable managing their own infrastructure and LLM costs.

Downside: You're responsible for proxy rotation, CAPTCHA handling, and infrastructure. Setup is more involved than a hosted API.

4. Apify — Best for Complex Workflows

Apify is a full web automation platform with an actor marketplace, scheduling, storage, and proxy management.

Pricing: Free (5/mo), $49/mo (100K results), $149/mo (1M results).

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("apify/web-scraper").call(
    run_input={"startUrls": [{"url": "https://example.com/blog"}]}
)

results = list(client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items())
for r in results[:5]:
    print(r)

Best for: Teams that need scheduled scraping jobs, persistent storage, and a marketplace of pre-built scrapers.

Downside: Overkill for simple scrape-and-return use cases. The actor model adds complexity that's unnecessary for most AI applications.

5. ZenRows — Best for Anti-Bot Evasion

ZenRows specializes in bypassing anti-bot protections with built-in proxy rotation and CAPTCHA solving.

Pricing: Free (1K/mo), Starter $49/mo (50K), Professional $99/mo (250K).

import requests

resp = requests.get(
    "https://api.zenrows.com/v1/batches",
    params={
        "apikey": "YOUR_KEY",
        "urls": "https://example.com/page",
        "js_render": "true",
        "premium_proxy": "true"
    }
)
print(resp.text[:500])

Best for: Scraping targets with aggressive anti-bot measures (Cloudflare, Datadome, etc.) where success rate matters more than price.

Limitation: Returns raw HTML — you handle parsing, markdown conversion, and extraction yourself.

6. ScraperAPI — Most Reliable Scraping API

ScraperAPI handles proxy rotation, CAPTCHAs, and JavaScript rendering. Simple API, solid reliability.

Pricing: Free (1K/mo), Hobby $29/mo (100K), Startup $99/mo (500K), Business $249/mo (2M).

import requests

resp = requests.get(
    "https://api.scraperapi.com/account",
    params={
        "api_key": "YOUR_KEY",
        "url": "https://example.com",
        "render": "true"
    }
)
print(resp.text[:500])

Best for: Production applications where reliability matters more than features. Large proxy pool, high success rates.

Limitation: No markdown conversion or structured extraction. Returns raw HTML.

7. Crawl4AI — Best Self-Hosted Option

Crawl4AI is a modern, open-source web crawler designed for LLM applications. Self-hosted, with Docker support.

Pricing: Free (open source, MIT license).

pip install crawl4ai

from crawl4ai import AsyncWebCrawler

async def scrape():
    async with AsyncWebCrawler(verbose=True) as crawler:
        result = await crawler.arun(
            url="https://example.com/blog/post",
            word_count_threshold=10,
            bypass_cache=True
        )
        print(result.markdown[:1000])

import asyncio
asyncio.run(scrape())

Best for: Teams with infrastructure capacity who want full control and no API costs. Works well for batch processing.

Downside: Self-hosting means managing servers, updates, and scaling. No built-in proxy rotation.

Comparison Table

Verdict

For AI applications: SearchHive is the strongest option. ScrapeForge gives you markdown conversion and JavaScript rendering, DeepDive handles LLM-powered extraction, and SwiftSearch covers SERP data. One API key, one SDK, and it costs less than Firecrawl at every tier.

For maximum savings on simple scraping: ScraperAPI is hard to beat at $0.29/1K pages on the Hobby plan, as long as you handle parsing yourself.

For zero vendor lock-in: ScrapeGraphAI or Crawl4AI. Both are open-source, both support markdown output, and both let you run everything on your own infrastructure.

For quick prototyping: Jina Reader. Append a URL and get markdown back. No signup required.

→ Get 500 free credits on SearchHive — test ScrapeForge, SwiftSearch, and DeepDive with no credit card.