Top Firecrawl Alternatives for AI Scraping — Pricing and Features Ranked

Firecrawl made a name for itself as the go-to scraping API for AI applications. Its markdown conversion, crawling, and LLM-ready output format are well-designed. But the pricing adds up — 100K credits/month runs $75, and you burn credits fast on anything beyond simple HTML extraction.

If you're building AI pipelines that need reliable web data, there are alternatives that cost less and do more. This guide compares the top options, ranked by what matters to developers: price, reliability, and data quality.

Key Takeaways

• SearchHive combines scraping, search, and AI extraction for $49/100K credits — roughly 35% cheaper than Firecrawl at equivalent volume
• Jina AI Reader is free for basic markdown conversion but lacks structured extraction and anti-bot bypass
• ScrapingBee offers solid JS rendering with per-request pricing, but no LLM-optimized output
• Crawl4AI is open-source and free if you manage your own infrastructure
• Firecrawl's credit system obscures actual costs — different endpoints burn credits at different rates

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1. SearchHive — Best Value for AI Scraping

SearchHive's ScrapeForge API handles the full pipeline: fetch, render JavaScript, bypass anti-bot, convert to clean markdown, and extract structured data via DeepDive AI. One credit system covers everything.

Pricing: $0 (500 credits), Starter $9/5K, Builder $49/100K, Unicorn $199/500K

Firecrawl charges $75 for 100K credits at the Standard tier. SearchHive gives you 100K for $49 — and those credits work for search and AI extraction too, not just scraping.

import requests

API_KEY = "your-searchhive-key"

# Scrape a page with JS rendering
resp = requests.get(
    "https://api.searchhive.dev/v1/scrape",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {API_KEY}"},
    params={"url": "https://example.com/product-page", "render_js": "true"}
)
data = resp.json()
print(data["markdown"][:500])  # Clean markdown output

# AI-powered structured extraction
extract_resp = requests.post(
    "https://api.searchhive.dev/v1/deepdive",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {API_KEY}"},
    json={
        "url": "https://example.com/product-page",
        "prompt": "Extract product name, price, rating, and availability"
    }
)
print(extract_resp.json()["structured_data"])

Why teams switch from Firecrawl:

• 35% cheaper at equivalent volumes
• Built-in AI extraction (no need for separate LLM calls)
• Unified API — search, scrape, and extract from one endpoint
• Credits work across all products, not locked to scraping alone

/compare/firecrawl

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2. Jina AI Reader — Best Free Option

Jina Reader converts any URL to clean markdown via r.jina.ai/<url>. It's fast, free for basic use, and widely adopted in the AI community.

Pricing: Free for basic use, Pro tier available for higher volumes

The simplicity is the appeal — one URL pattern, markdown output, done. No SDK, no account setup.

import requests

url = "https://example.com/article"
resp = requests.get(f"https://r.jina.ai/{url}")
print(resp.text)

Strengths: Free, zero-config, clean markdown Weaknesses: No JS rendering, no anti-bot bypass on protected sites, no structured extraction, rate-limited on free tier, no crawling support

/compare/jina-ai

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3. ScrapingBee — Best for JS Rendering

ScrapingBee specializes in JavaScript-heavy pages. Their headless browser pool renders React, Vue, and Angular sites reliably.

Pricing: $49/1K requests (with JS rendering), cheaper for simple HTML

The per-request pricing with JS rendering is expensive compared to credit-based systems. At 100K rendered pages, you're paying $4,900 — vastly more than Firecrawl or SearchHive.

import requests

resp = requests.get(
    "https://app.scrapingbee.com/api/v1/",
    params={
        "api_key": "YOUR_KEY",
        "url": "https://example.com",
        "render_js": "true",
        "premium_proxy": "true"
    }
)
print(resp.text)

Strengths: Excellent JS rendering, rotating proxies, screenshot API Weaknesses: Expensive at scale, no markdown conversion, no AI extraction

/compare/scrapingbee

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4. Crawl4AI — Best Open Source

Crawl4AI is an open-source Python library for web crawling and scraping, designed for LLM applications. Self-hosted, no API costs.

Pricing: Free (self-hosted). You pay for your own compute and proxies.

from crawl4ai import AsyncWebCrawler

async def scrape():
    async with AsyncWebCrawler() as crawler:
        result = await crawler.arun(url="https://example.com")
        print(result.markdown[:500])

import asyncio
asyncio.run(scrape())

Strengths: Free, open-source, LLM-optimized extraction, active community Weaknesses: You manage infrastructure, proxies, scaling, and maintenance. No SLA. Not truly free when you factor in compute costs at scale.

/compare/crawl4ai

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5. Apify — Best for Complex Workflows

Apify provides pre-built "actors" for common scraping tasks — Amazon products, Google Maps, LinkedIn profiles, etc. Their platform handles scheduling, storage, and proxy rotation.

Pricing: Free $5/mo credit, Starter $49/mo, Business $199/mo, Enterprise custom

The per-use pricing within Apify is complex — each actor has its own compute cost. Budgeting is harder than with flat credit systems.

Strengths: Pre-built scrapers for common sites, scheduling, storage, large ecosystem Weaknesses: Complex pricing, actor-dependent quality, expensive for custom scraping

/compare/apify

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6. ZenRows — Best Anti-Bot Bypass

ZenRows focuses on one thing: bypassing anti-bot systems. Their proxy network and browser fingerprinting handle Cloudflare, PerimeterX, Akamai, and other protections.

Pricing: $49/50K requests, pay-as-you-go available

Strong at what it does, but it's a raw HTML/free JSON formatter response — no markdown conversion, no AI extraction, no crawling built in.

Strengths: Best-in-class anti-bot bypass, rotating proxies, geo-targeting Weaknesses: No AI features, no markdown, no structured extraction, expensive per-request

/compare/zenrows

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7. ScraperAPI — Best Simple Proxy API

ScraperAPI rotates proxies and handles retries automatically. Send a URL, get the HTML back. Simple.

Pricing: $49/5K requests, $149/25K, $449/100K

Strengths: Dead simple API, automatic retries and proxy rotation Weaknesses: Expensive, no JS rendering on base plans, no data processing

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Comparison Table

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Recommendation

SearchHive offers the best overall package for AI scraping in 2026. You get JS rendering, anti-bot bypass, markdown conversion, and AI-powered extraction — all for less than Firecrawl charges for scraping alone.

If you're bootstrapping and can handle infrastructure, Crawl4AI eliminates API costs entirely. For quick markdown conversion without authentication, Jina Reader remains unbeatable at its price point (zero).

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Start scraping with 500 free credits on SearchHive. No credit card required. Sign up or read the docs for integration guides.