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BrowserAct 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

Free plan
Both have one
Public API
Both have one
Higher Trust score
Firecrawl — 89 vs 71 for BrowserAct
Best fit
BrowserAct: Recurring competitor, price or listing extraction without maintaining browsers · Firecrawl: Developers feeding site content into RAG or agent pipelines
Status
Both up at our last check — BrowserAct Sep 6, 2026, Firecrawl Oct 2, 2026

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

BrowserActDescribe a scrape in plain language and get a reusable cloud bot with proxies includedFirecrawlWeb data API that searches, scrapes, crawls and interacts with sites, returning clean Markdown or JSON for LLM pipelines.

Side by side

FactBrowserActFirecrawl
CategoryWeb Scraping & Data ExtractionWeb Scraping & Data Extraction
Pricing modelFreemiumFreemium
Starts at—$16/mo
Public APIYesYes
Trust score71 / 10089 / 100
PlatformsWeb, APIWeb, API
CompanyBrowserActSideGuide Technologies, Inc. (d/b/a Firecrawl)
Launched—2024
Last verifiedSep 6, 2026Oct 2, 2026

What our research says

BrowserAct

Bundles the annoying parts of scraping — proxies, fingerprints, CAPTCHAs, retries — behind a prompt and a credit meter, with API and automation-platform delivery built in. The catch is pricing you cannot compare before signing up, plus a meter that charges per step, per gigabyte and per browser at once.

Pros

  • Bot is built by exploring and testing the live site, then reused
  • Proxies, fingerprinting and CAPTCHA handling are included, not bolted on
  • Documented API, MCP support and Make, n8n and Zapier delivery
  • Self-healing runs and a visual workflow builder as a fallback

Cons

  • Subscription prices are hidden behind registration
  • Multi-axis credit meter makes cost estimation awkward
  • Credit packs expire at the next monthly reset rather than rolling over

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 BrowserAct if you need

  • Recurring competitor, price or listing extraction without maintaining browsers
  • Non-developers who want a scraper from a written brief
  • Piping structured rows into n8n, Make or Zapier flows

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

BrowserAct vs Firecrawl: the questions people ask

Is BrowserAct cheaper than Firecrawl?

Firecrawl starts at $16/mo. BrowserAct has a free tier; what its paid plans cost is not confirmed by us yet.

Does BrowserAct or Firecrawl have a free tier?

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

Which has a public API, BrowserAct or Firecrawl?

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

More comparisons

All BrowserAct alternatives →Browse all Web Scraping & Data Extraction →