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Firecrawl vs Webscrape AI

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 $27/mo for Webscrape AI
Free plan
Only Firecrawl (Webscrape AI has paid plans only)
Public API
Both have one
Higher Trust score
Firecrawl — 89 vs 73 for Webscrape AI
Best fit
Firecrawl: Developers feeding site content into RAG or agent pipelines · Webscrape AI: One-off competitor, listing or price pulls a non-developer needs in a spreadsheet

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

FirecrawlWeb data API that searches, scrapes, crawls and interacts with sites, returning clean Markdown or JSON for LLM pipelines.Webscrape AINo-code scraper that extracts fields from URLs you describe

Side by side

FactFirecrawlWebscrape AI
CategoryWeb Scraping & Data ExtractionWeb Scraping & Data Extraction
Pricing modelFreemiumPaid
Starts at$16/mo$27/mo
Public APIYesYes
Trust score89 / 10073 / 100
PlatformsWeb, APIWeb, API
CompanySideGuide Technologies, Inc. (d/b/a Firecrawl)—
Launched2024—
Last verifiedOct 2, 2026Sep 6, 2026

What our research says

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

Webscrape AI

A thin indie scraper priced per URL: fine for a few hundred pages a month, badly priced the moment you need volume. Anyone comfortable holding an API key should price Firecrawl or Apify first.

Pros

  • Describe-the-fields interface removes CSS and XPath work entirely
  • REST endpoint accepts a schema, page count and JS instructions, so it can sit inside a script
  • Proxy support and JavaScript wait arrive at the mid tier, not enterprise
  • CSV, JSON and text output covers both spreadsheet and code consumers

Cons

  • No free plan and no pay-as-you-go top-up: the entry point is $27/month
  • No company name, address or contact page published anywhere on the site
  • Only three fixed tiers with hard caps, the largest at 1,000 URLs/month
  • No scheduling, no login-gated scraping, no built-in deduplication or diffing

Which one fits

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

Choose Webscrape AI if you need

  • One-off competitor, listing or price pulls a non-developer needs in a spreadsheet
  • Small research jobs where writing a custom scraper is not worth the hour
  • Prototyping an extraction schema before committing to a real pipeline

Firecrawl vs Webscrape AI: the questions people ask

Is Firecrawl cheaper than Webscrape AI?

On published entry prices, Firecrawl starts lower — $16/mo against $27/mo for Webscrape AI. Entry price is the lowest paid plan as we last verified it; what each plan includes differs.

Does Firecrawl or Webscrape AI have a free tier?

Firecrawl has a free tier; Webscrape AI has paid plans only.

Which has a public API, Firecrawl or Webscrape AI?

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 Webscrape AI alternatives →Browse all Web Scraping & Data Extraction →