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Apify vs Firecrawl

Two fact sheets from our own research, side by side — pricing, platforms, API access and status re-checked by us rather than quoted from the vendors.

The short answer

Cheaper paid plan
Firecrawl — $16/mo vs $29/mo for Apify
Free plan
Both have one
Public API
Both have one
Higher Trust score
Apify — 96 vs 89 for Firecrawl
Best fit
Apify: Teams that would rather rent a maintained scraper than babysit their own · Firecrawl: Developers feeding site content into RAG or agent pipelines

From our own records as of each tool's last check. Anything we have not confirmed is left out rather than guessed. How we verify

ApifyMarketplace and cloud platform of ready-made scrapers ('Actors') plus infrastructure to run your ownFirecrawlWeb data API that searches, scrapes, crawls and interacts with sites, returning clean Markdown or JSON for LLM pipelines.

Side by side

FactApifyFirecrawl
CategoryWeb Scraping & Data ExtractionWeb Scraping & Data Extraction
Pricing modelFreemiumFreemium
Starts at$29/mo$16/mo
Public APIYesYes
Trust score96 / 10089 / 100
PlatformsWeb, APIWeb, API
CompanyApify Technologies s.r.o.SideGuide Technologies, Inc. (d/b/a Firecrawl)
Launched20152024
Last verifiedSep 6, 2026Oct 2, 2026

What our research says

Apify

The Actor marketplace is the draw: for most popular sites someone has already built and maintains the scraper, and agent-facing interfaces (API, MCP) are first-class. Costs need watching, since compute units plus per-Actor fees stack on top of the subscription and are hard to predict before you run at volume.

Pros

  • Huge catalog of maintained scrapers for common targets
  • Real free tier with $5 of usage and no card required
  • SDKs, CLI, proxies and scheduling in one platform
  • Published discounts for startups, universities and nonprofits

Cons

  • Two-layer pricing (subscription plus usage plus Actor fees) complicates forecasting
  • Marketplace Actor quality varies by author
  • Large-scale scraping raises site-terms and legal questions the platform leaves to you

Firecrawl

Firecrawl is a sensible default when an agent or RAG pipeline needs readable page content and you would rather not run proxies and headless browsers yourself. The credit model is simple to reason about for plain scrapes, but extra formats and browser sessions cost more credits than the headline page count suggests.

Pros

  • One API covers search, scrape, crawl, map and page interaction
  • Free tier renews every month and needs no card
  • Open-source core with SDKs, an MCP server and a CLI for agent tools
  • Failed scrapes that return nothing are not charged

Cons

  • JSON, question and highlight formats add 4 credits per page, so structured extraction costs several times a plain scrape
  • Pages that return an error status such as 403 or 404 still cost a credit
  • Headline plan prices are annual; paying monthly is higher

Which one fits

Choose Apify if you need

  • Teams that would rather rent a maintained scraper than babysit their own
  • AI builders feeding agents live web data through the API or MCP server
  • Developers monetizing crawlers without running infrastructure

Choose Firecrawl if you need

  • Developers feeding site content into RAG or agent pipelines
  • Teams that want a hosted scraper but keep the option to self-host the open-source core
  • Prototypes that fit inside the free monthly credits

Apify vs Firecrawl: the questions people ask

Is Apify cheaper than Firecrawl?

On published entry prices, Firecrawl starts lower — $16/mo against $29/mo for Apify. Entry price is the lowest paid plan as we last verified it; what each plan includes differs.

Does Apify or Firecrawl have a free tier?

Both: Apify has a free tier, and Firecrawl has a free tier.

Which has a public API, Apify or Firecrawl?

Both ship a public API, so either can be built on; the fact table above shows the platforms each one runs on.

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