Firecrawl alternative: Web Scraper vs Firecrawl
Firecrawl is an API that turns pages into markdown or schema JSON for AI pipelines, billed per credit. Web Scraper Cloud produces named fields from selectors you define visually and runs them on a schedule, on a plan priced by concurrent scraping capacity.
Reviewed October 2026 Every claim below links to a current vendor page.
You need a table of named fields on a schedule, built without code, at a price that does not move with page count.
You are feeding a retrieval pipeline and want page text as markdown from a single API call inside your own orchestration.
Web Scraper vs Firecrawl: features and pricing
Compare how Web Scraper and Firecrawl handle setup, Cloud automation, integrations, proxies, and scaling. Web Scraper Scale is compared with Firecrawl Scale, the highest self-service plan each vendor prices publicly.
| CAPABILITY | Web Scraper Scale, $200 per month | Firecrawl Scale, $749 per month |
|---|---|---|
| Setup and creation | ||
| Where scrapers are built | Visual sitemap builder in a browser extension Free extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, with no code or desktop application required. | API calls, with a test playground Production jobs are API calls from your own code; the dashboard playground runs test requests without code. |
| Time to a working scraper | Faster than writing code Point at the data on the live page, or let the AI Sitemap Wizard map it, then check the result in the data preview. | API calls with a prompt or schema Each job is an API call from your own code, with an LLM filling the schema or prompt you supply. |
| Skills needed | Browser skills No programming language or HTML parsing to learn. | Programming and prompt design API calls from your own code, plus a schema or prompt for extraction. |
| AI-assisted setup | AI Sitemap Wizard Maps repeated listing data, detects pagination and infinite scrolling, and follows item links to collect fields from detail pages. | Prompt or schema extraction An LLM returns JSON from a prompt or a schema you supply, at four extra credits per page. |
| Manual selector control | Advanced Sitemap Builder Point and click, AI selector generation for listing and detail pages, and 10+ selector types for data, navigation, and clicks. | Full code control Selectors and crawl logic live in your own call. |
| Logins and site setup | Website State Setup Signs in or sets location, language, or currency before scraping, only when that state is missing, with passwords encrypted in Cloud. | Browser actions and saved profiles Sign in with API actions or prompts, keep cookies in a profile, and set country and language. |
| Ready-made starting points | Sitemap Marketplace Ready-made sitemaps maintained by Web Scraper, available at no additional cost. | Product format and Alexandria tools The product format returns product fields without a schema, and Alexandria runs third-party data tools at each tool's listed price. |
| When a website changes | Update a selector Fix the sitemap by point and click and sync it to Cloud, with nothing to redeploy. | Usually nothing to fix LLM extraction reads each page as it is, so layout changes rarely need a code change. |
| Cloud automation | ||
| Cloud execution | Web Scraper Cloud Runs sitemaps created in the Web Scraper extension remotely after sync or import. | Hosted API Requests execute on Firecrawl infrastructure. |
| Queue, link following, and storage | Built into every job Cloud queues URLs, follows links and pagination, retries failed pages, and keeps results for 60 days. | Crawl and batch endpoints Crawl follows links from a start URL and batch scrape queues URL lists; results can be fetched for 24 hours. |
| Scheduling | Daily, interval, and custom CRON Intervals as short as 1 minute, with a selectable time zone and driver, proxy, and priority set per schedule. | Scheduled monitors Monitors run scrapes, crawls, or searches on a cron schedule as often as every 5 minutes, and report changes. |
| Rendering and execution modes | Full JS and Fast drivers Full JS loads pages in a full browser environment; Fast skips page JavaScript to scrape faster. | Rendering by default Every scrape renders JavaScript, with no flag or driver to choose. |
| Retry behavior | Automatic retries of empty or failed pages Retries use a different proxy IP and browser fingerprint, and do not consume URL credits. CAPTCHAs and bot check pages are solved automatically. | One automatic proxy retry A failed request is retried once on enhanced proxies at no extra cost; pages returned with 403 or 404 still cost a credit. |
| Concurrency model | Concurrent scrapers Starts at 2 concurrent scrapers and scales with no set ceiling; add capacity at any time. A single job can expand to up to 5 concurrent scrapers. | 100 concurrent browsers Scrape requests are rate limited to 10,000 a minute, and crawls to 2,000. |
| Data and integrations | ||
| Data cleaning | Parser, with no code Regex, replace, HTML stripping, virtual columns, and timestamp conversion, previewed on sample records and applied in Cloud. | LLM extraction and content filters Returns main content or schema-shaped JSON and can redact personal data; other value changes need your own code. |
| Data quality checks | Thresholds on every job Minimum records, maximum failed or empty pages, and minimum filled fields, with suggested values from a previous run. | No result checks Monitors report page changes and errors; record-count or empty-field checks need your own code. |
| API | Cloud API with an OpenAPI description Manage sitemaps, jobs, and schedules, and download results, with code examples for every programming language. | API-first platform Scrape, crawl, map, search, agent, and monitor endpoints. |
| Webhooks | Job status webhooks Sent when a job finishes, stops, or fails, with job and sitemap IDs and an optional custom ID, and retried if your endpoint does not respond. | Webhooks for every job type Crawl, batch scrape, extract, agent, and monitor events, including one per scraped page. |
| Data export formats | CSV, XLSX, JSON Each scraping job's data can be downloaded in all three formats. | Markdown, HTML, JSON Screenshots and schema JSON are also available. |
| Export integrations | Google Sheets, Google Drive, Dropbox, S3, Google Cloud, Azure The complete dataset is sent after each job finishes. | Zapier, Make, n8n, Pipedream Official apps for automation platforms; no storage destinations are documented. |
| Notifications | Email and in-app alerts Alerts when a job fails or misses its data quality thresholds, with email and in-app channels set per alert type. | Monitor alerts by email or Slack Monitors send an email summary when pages change or error, and can post to Slack. |
| Image and file handling | Image export Downloads images during the scraping job using the Image selector and delivers the files to Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, or Azure Blob Storage. | Screenshots and image URLs Returns screenshots and page image URLs; images are not downloaded or delivered to storage. |
| Scale and pricing | ||
| Plan compared | Scale, $200 per month $2,000 per year billed annually, $167 per month. | Scale, $749 per month Highest self-service tier; $599 per month when billed annually. |
| What the plan fee buys | Unlimited URL credits The fee buys concurrent scraping capacity, and page volume does not change it. | 1,000,000 credits per month Scrape and crawl cost one credit per page. JSON, Question, and Highlight formats add four credits per page, and a Monitor check costs one credit per page, or seven with JSON extraction. |
| Cost per 1,000 URLs no JS, DC proxies | From $0.03 Fast driver on the included datacenter proxies; two scrapers at $200 per month cover about 4.3M URLs. | $0.75 Every scrape renders the page, and a basic scrape costs one credit. |
| Cost per 1,000 URLs JS, DC proxies | From $0.05 Full JS driver on the included datacenter proxies; two scrapers at $200 per month cover about 2.2M URLs. | $0.75 One credit per page for a basic scrape. JSON, Question, and Highlight formats cost five credits per page. |
| Cost per 1,000 URLs JS, Residential proxies | From $0.681 Full JS driver plus residential traffic, sold separately at $2.50 per GB. | $0.75 with enhanced proxies Enhanced proxies for complex sites cost nothing extra; Firecrawl does not say whether they are residential. |
| Unused capacity | No credit ceiling Unlimited URL credits leave no balance to forfeit at the end of a cycle. | No rollover on monthly billing Firecrawl's docs roll credits over only on annual Scale; its pricing page does not say which billing applies. |
| Included datacenter proxies | US, GB, and DE datacenter proxies Included at no additional cost. | Included in credits No separate proxy line; every endpoint draws on one credit pool. |
| Residential proxies | Available at $2.50 per GB In 47 locations, billed on bandwidth used. | Not sold separately Proxy handling is bundled into the credit cost. |
| Third-party fees | Marketplace sitemaps at no extra cost They run on your own plan, with no separate per-result charge. | None All usage draws on the same credit pool. |
| Cloud data retention | 60 days Scraped data stays available to download from Cloud for that period. | 24 hours for crawl jobs Crawl job results can be fetched from the API for 24 hours; monitor results are kept 30 days by default, up to 365. |
1 Proxy traffic is sold separately, so the price is calculated based on a 250 KB page size.
Reasons to choose Web Scraper
A table, not a page dump
Selectors return named columns, and the Parser can clean values with regex, text replacement, or virtual columns, so the result is ready for a warehouse or spreadsheet without an extra parsing step.
Web Scraper documentationScheduled runs deliver the data
Daily, interval, and custom CRON schedules run inside Cloud with a selectable time zone, and each finished dataset can go straight to Google Sheets, S3, Google Cloud, or Azure.
SchedulerPage count stops moving the bill
The fee buys concurrent scraping capacity with unlimited URL credits, so growing a crawl does not consume a credit balance.
Web Scraper pricingWeb Scraper Scale vs Firecrawl Scale
Each side is shown at its highest self-service plan with published pricing.
Web Scraper Cloud · Scale
$200 per month
Or $2,000 per year billed annually, $167 per month
- Capacity
- Unlimited URL credits
- Concurrency
- Starts at 2 concurrent scrapers, scales with no set ceiling; a single job can use up to 5
- Proxies
- US, GB, and DE datacenter proxies included; residential in 47 locations at $2.50 per GB
- Plan limitation
- Capacity grows by adding concurrent scrapers, at a lower price per scraper as you add more; residential proxy traffic is billed on usage
- Cost per 1,000 URLs no JS, DC proxies
- From $0.03
- Cost per 1,000 URLs JS, DC proxies
- From $0.05
- Cost per 1,000 URLs JS, Residential proxies
- From $0.681
Firecrawl · Scale
$749 per month
Or $599 per month billed annually.
- Capacity
- 1,000,000 credits per month
- Concurrency
- 100 concurrent browsers
- Proxies
- Included in the credit cost; no separate proxy line
- Plan limitation
- JSON, Question, and Highlight formats cost five credits per page, and JSON Monitor checks seven
- Cost per 1,000 URLs no JS, DC proxies
- $0.75
- Cost per 1,000 URLs JS, DC proxies
- $0.75
- Cost per 1,000 URLs JS, Residential proxies
- $0.75 with enhanced proxies
The two prices do not buy the same unit
A Firecrawl credit covers one page for a scrape or crawl, but the JSON, Question, and Highlight formats add four credits per page, so effective volume depends on which formats a job uses. Web Scraper charges for concurrent scraping capacity and does not meter pages at all.
- Firecrawl credit consumption assumes plain scraping at one credit per page, with no JSON, Question, Highlight, or Monitor calls.
- Both prices are monthly list prices from each vendor's public pricing page.
- 1 Proxy traffic is sold separately, so the price is calculated based on a 250 KB page size.
For document ingestion into a retrieval index, Firecrawl returns markdown per URL from a single API call, and covers search and site mapping from the same credit pool.
Switching from Firecrawl
Can a Firecrawl job be imported?
Scrapers move over as Web Scraper sitemaps built in the free browser extension, where the AI Sitemap Wizard maps listing pages for you. Many common targets also have a ready-made Marketplace sitemap that you can import into Web Scraper Cloud.
Do we still get page text?
Yes. A Text or HTML selector returns the content of any element, up to the whole page, alongside the named fields you define.
How does the bill change?
A capacity plan replaces a credit balance. It is a fixed monthly fee for concurrent scrapers with unlimited URL credits, so page count no longer moves the invoice.
How does data reach our systems?
Results are retrieved through the API or delivered to Google Sheets, Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure after each job. Webhook notifications report job status and identifiers.
See it applied to your use case
Compare Web Scraper with other tools
Most teams shortlist two or three tools. These pages cover the same capabilities and plan tiers.
Try it on the website you want to scrape
Use the 7-day free trial, with no credit card required, to run Web Scraper Cloud on the website you need data from.
This comparison reflects publicly available information and our understanding of the products as of October 2026. Features, pricing, and other details may change over time, so we recommend verifying current information directly with each provider before making a decision. All product names, trademarks, logos, and brands belong to their respective owners and are referenced solely for identification and comparison purposes. No affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement is implied.