Crawl4AI

You can run Crawl4AI yourself for free under its Apache-2.0 license, so the real cost is the server and the hours someone spends keeping it updated.

• Async Python crawler with Chromium, Firefox and WebKit
• Markdown generation with pruning, BM25 and LLM content filters
• Structured extraction with CSS, XPath, regex or any LLM into a JSON schema
• Deep crawl (BFS, DFS, best-first) with crash recovery and adaptive crawling
• Sessions, persistent browser profiles, proxies, stealth mode and hooks
• Docker server with REST endpoints, MCP and a monitoring dashboard
• Crawl4AI Cloud: scrape, search, answer, extract, batch and bulk jobs behind one API key

The depth is in crawl control: sessions with saved logins, hooks at every step, adaptive crawling that stops when it has enough, and Markdown filters you can tune per query. Most paid APIs hide these behind defaults. The trade is that you configure more, and on your own servers you also own the anti-bot fight.

1. 1

   Install the library

   Install from PyPI and run the setup command once to download the browser.

   pip install -U crawl4ai
   crawl4ai-setup

2. 2

   Crawl your first page

   Open an AsyncWebCrawler and print the Markdown for one URL to check the output quality on a site you care about.

   import asyncio
   from crawl4ai import AsyncWebCrawler
   
   async def main():
       async with AsyncWebCrawler() as crawler:
           result = await crawler.arun(url="https://news.ycombinator.com")
           print(result.markdown)
   
   asyncio.run(main())

3. 3

   Tune the Markdown

   Add a pruning or BM25 content filter so only the main content reaches your model, and compare token counts before and after.

4. 4

   Run it as a server

   Use the Docker image to get a REST API, an MCP endpoint and a dashboard, protected by your own API token, so other services and agents can call it.

5. 5

   Add proxies for hard sites

   Configure proxy rotation and stealth mode for sites that block automation. Expect to pay a proxy provider for this when self-hosting.

6. 6

   Or use the cloud instead

   Verify your email for a key and $10 of credit, then call api.crawl4ai.com/scrape. Use the estimate endpoint to see a call's credit range before running it at scale.

Most people weighing Crawl4AI are really asking whether to keep paying for Firecrawl. You trade convenience for control: run it yourself and the data is yours, or pay someone else to run it for you.

Firecrawl figures are from its pricing page, checked 2026-10-02.

Crawl4AI vs Firecrawl

Firecrawl is a managed API from $19 a month for 5,000 credits that expire monthly, with search, interaction and a keyless MCP. Crawl4AI is free to self-host, and its cloud credits never expire. Firecrawl is less setup; Crawl4AI is more control and cheaper for bursty work.

Crawl4AI vs Apify

Apify's store has ready-made scrapers for specific sites, from $19 a month plus compute units. Crawl4AI is a general crawler you configure yourself. Use Apify when a maintained Actor exists; use Crawl4AI for general pages into an LLM.

Crawl4AI vs Scrapy

Scrapy is the long-standing Python crawling framework, fast for static HTML but without built-in browser rendering or LLM-ready Markdown. Crawl4AI is built for JavaScript sites and AI output.

Crawl4AI vs Playwright alone

Playwright gives you the browser and nothing else. Crawl4AI adds Markdown generation, content filtering, extraction strategies and crawl orchestration on top.