Firecrawl vs Crawl4AI
Crawl4AI is one of the tools people move to when they leave Firecrawl. Crawl4AI scores higher, 4.1 to 3.9, though the right pick depends on who you are. You can host either one yourself.
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Firecrawl
3.9/ 5 · Freemium
Turn any website into clean Markdown or JSON for AI agents
Crawl4AI
4.1/ 5 · Freemium
Open-source crawler that turns websites into LLM-ready Markdown
The short answer
Both turn web pages into clean Markdown for LLMs. Firecrawl is a managed API with monthly plans from $19 for 5,000 credits, plus search, browser interaction and a keyless MCP server. Crawl4AI is a free, open-source Python crawler (Apache-2.0) you run yourself, and since 2026 also a hosted cloud with credits that never expire.
Pick Firecrawl if you want the least setup and steady monthly volume. Pick Crawl4AI if you write Python, want full control over crawling, or your work comes in bursts: self-hosting is free, and its cloud charges about $0.0002 for a light page with no monthly expiry, though it labels those prices launch pricing.
Side by side
| Detail | Firecrawl | Crawl4AI |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes |
| Our rating | 3.9 / 5 | 4.1 / 5 |
| Replaces | Apify | Firecrawl |
| Best for | Developers and AI builders who need live web pages as clean text inside an LLM app, RAG pipeline or agent, and would rather pay per page than run headless browsers and proxies. | Python developers and AI builders who want LLM-ready web content without a monthly subscription, and are comfortable running their own crawler or paying per request in the cloud. |
| Limits | Everything draws on one monthly credit pool: a basic page is 1 credit, but search is 2 credits per 10 results, browser interaction is 2 credits a minute and JSON extraction adds 4 credits a page. Credits on Free, Hobby, Standard and Growth vanish at the end of the month. Rate limits are low on Free (10 scrape requests and 2 crawl requests a minute, 2 concurrent browsers). Single sign-on, zero data retention and an SLA are Enterprise-only, and self-hosting leaves out Agent, Browser, Interact and the managed anti-bot paths. | The library and Docker server are free, but every hard part (headless browsers, proxies, CAPTCHAs, retries, scaling) is yours to run. The cloud handles that and bills per credit at $0.001 each: a light scrape is 0.2 credits, a page needing a real browser is ten times that, a search is 0.5 credits, and LLM extraction adds token charges. The vendor labels these launch prices, discounted for the first year and subject to change. |
| License | AGPL-3.0 core; Cloud is proprietary | Apache-2.0 library and server; Cloud is proprietary |
| Self-hosted cost | Free, but no Agent, Browser or Interact | Free, full library; you supply proxies |
| Cloud pricing | Monthly plans: $19 (5,000 credits), $99 (100,000), $399, $749 | Pay as you go: $0.001 per credit, light scrape 0.2 credits, browser page ×10 |
| Unused credits | Expire monthly below Scale | Never expire (signup and bought credit) |
| Free to start | 1,000 credits a month | $10 of credit at signup until December 31, 2026 |
| Languages | SDKs in 9 languages plus REST | Python library; REST and MCP via Docker or Cloud |
| Search API | Yes, 2 credits per 10 results | Cloud only, 0.5 credits per search |
What's good, what isn't
Firecrawl
- Pro: Returns Markdown, HTML, JSON or screenshots from one API call
- Pro: Free plan of 1,000 credits a month with no card, plus a keyless MCP server for agents
- Pro: Search, scrape, crawl, map and browser interaction share one credit balance
- Pro: Open-source core under AGPL-3.0 that you can run with Docker Compose
- Pro: Official SDKs for Python, Node, Go, Java, Ruby, Rust, .NET, PHP and Elixir
- Con: Unused credits expire each month on Free, Hobby, Standard and Growth; only Scale rolls over, for one month
- Con: JSON, Question and Highlight formats add 4 credits per page, so structured extraction costs 5 credits a page
- Con: Pages that answer with a 403 or 404 still cost a credit
- Con: Agent, Browser, Interact and the dashboard aren't part of the self-hosted stack
Crawl4AI
- Pro: Free and open source under Apache-2.0, with about 85,000 GitHub stars
- Pro: Clean Markdown with boilerplate filters and numbered citations, built for LLMs
- Pro: Deep crawling, adaptive crawling, sessions, proxies and stealth mode in one library
- Pro: Docker server with a REST API, MCP endpoint and monitoring dashboard
- Pro: Cloud credits never expire, and signup includes $10 of credit until December 31, 2026
- Con: Self-hosted, you handle browsers, proxies, blocks and scaling yourself
- Con: Python only for the library; other languages go through the Docker REST API or the cloud
- Con: Cloud pricing is marked as launch pricing that may change
- Con: Pages that need a real browser cost ten times a light fetch on the cloud
So which one?
Pick Firecrawl if you're one of these:
Developers and AI builders who need live web pages as clean text inside an LLM app, RAG pipeline or agent, and would rather pay per page than run headless browsers and proxies.
The quickest way to give an LLM app or agent clean text from live web pages, with an MCP server, SDKs in nine languages and an open-source core. Credits are shared across every endpoint and don't roll over below Scale, and options like JSON extraction cost five times a basic scrape.
Full Firecrawl reviewPick Crawl4AI if you're one of these:
Python developers and AI builders who want LLM-ready web content without a monthly subscription, and are comfortable running their own crawler or paying per request in the cloud.
The default free option for turning web pages into Markdown for an LLM, with more crawl controls than most paid APIs. Self-hosting means you run the browsers, proxies and scaling; the new cloud removes that but its launch prices may change.
Full Crawl4AI reviewFirecrawl vs Crawl4AI: questions
Is Crawl4AI a free Firecrawl alternative?
Yes, when self-hosted: the library and Docker server are free under Apache-2.0. You run the browsers and proxies yourself, which is the work Firecrawl charges for.
Which is cheaper in the cloud?
At list prices, a light Crawl4AI Cloud page costs about $0.0002 and a browser-rendered page $0.002, with credits that never expire. Firecrawl Standard works out to about $0.001 per basic page if you use the whole $99 plan each month. Crawl4AI's prices are marked as first-year launch pricing.
Which is easier to set up?
Firecrawl: one API call or one MCP command, and a keyless tier for testing. Crawl4AI's cloud is similar, but the free route means installing the library and a browser, then handling blocks yourself.
ChatGPT
Claude
Perplexity
Grok