--- title: "Firecrawl Alternative for Hard-to-Scrape Sites" description: "A Firecrawl alternative with residential and stealth proxies designed for protected sites, AI extraction, and pay-only-for-success billing — from $29/mo." url: https://webscraping.ai/firecrawl-alternative markdown_index: https://webscraping.ai/llms.txt --- FIRECRAWL ALTERNATIVE # The Firecrawl alternative for protected sites Firecrawl is great at turning pages into clean markdown. For targets behind Cloudflare or DataDome, WebScraping.AI adds residential and stealth proxies, AI extraction, and pay-only-for-success billing. [Start Free Trial](https://webscraping.ai/auth/sign_up)[View Documentation](https://webscraping.ai/docs) 2,000 free API credits · No credit card required ## WebScraping.AI vs Firecrawl at a glance An honest, side-by-side comparison. Verify the numbers — this is a market where you should. | | WebScraping.AI | Firecrawl | | --- | --- | --- | | Billing on failures | **Free — only successful requests** | Charged on successful fetch, even error status | | Residential proxies | Yes (10–25 credits) | Add-on | | Stealth proxies (anti-bot) | Yes (50 credits) | Stealth mode (extra credits) | | JS (Chromium) rendering | Yes | Yes | | Natural-language Q&A (`/ai/question`) | Yes | Via extract schema | | AI field extraction | Yes (`/ai/fields`) | Yes (`/extract`) | | LLM-ready markdown / text | Yes (`/text`) | Yes (native) | | Whole-site crawl | — | Yes (`/crawl`) | | Open source / self-host | — | Yes | | First-party MCP server | Yes | Yes | | Pricing model | Fixed per request type | Per page; credits don't roll over | | Pay-as-you-go | **Yes** — prepaid credits from $20, no subscription | No — their FAQ explicitly rules out pay-per-use | Pricing and credit costs last checked July 2026. Sources: [Firecrawl pricing](https://www.firecrawl.dev/pricing) · [WebScraping.AI pricing](https://webscraping.ai/#pricing). ## What Firecrawl does well No tool is right for everyone. Firecrawl is a capable product, and these are the areas where it genuinely shines — worth weighing before you switch. **Native LLM-ready output** — clean markdown built for RAG and vector stores, with no post-processing. **Whole-site crawling** via `/crawl` — point it at a domain and ingest every page. **Open source and self-hostable** — run it yourself if you need full control. **Excellent DX for AI prototyping** , with a generous free tier and a $16 entry plan. ## Why developers look for a Firecrawl alternative The most common reasons teams evaluate a switch. #### You pay even when pages error Firecrawl charges when a page _fetches_ successfully — even if it returns an error status code. WebScraping.AI charges **only for genuinely successful requests** ; failures are always free. #### Fewer proxy controls for hard targets Firecrawl is optimized for clean markdown extraction. For heavily protected targets (Cloudflare, DataDome, PerimeterX), WebScraping.AI gives you explicit control over **datacenter, residential, and stealth proxies** with geotargeting, each at a published cost. #### Credits don't roll over Unused Firecrawl credits are forfeited at the end of the month. WebScraping.AI's per-request costs are fixed and **published up front** so you can size your plan accurately — or you can skip the subscription entirely and buy **prepaid credits from $20** that stay valid for 12 months, something Firecrawl's FAQ explicitly rules out. #### Agent pricing is unpredictable Firecrawl's `/agent` endpoint uses dynamic pricing that can burn large numbers of credits per query. WebScraping.AI charges a **fixed credit cost per request type** , every time. ## Transparent, published pricing Every request type has a fixed, published credit cost — no surprises, and you only pay for successful requests. Request type No JS + JS render Datacenter proxies 1 credit 5 credits Residential proxies 10 credits 25 credits Stealth proxies 50 credits 50 credits AI extraction add-on +5 credits Google SERP ([`/serp`](https://webscraping.ai/google-serp-api), parsed JSON) 15 credits per search Structured site data ([`/data`](https://webscraping.ai/docs#data), e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit) 15 credits per page (50 for Reddit), incl. empty parses Plans from **$29/mo** (250k credits) · **$99/mo** (1M) · **$249/mo** (3M) · or **pay-as-you-go** from $20 (100k credits, no subscription, valid 12 months). Failed requests are always free. [See full pricing](https://webscraping.ai/#pricing). ### Explicit proxy control for protected sites Firecrawl is a fetch-and-convert engine: it's superb at turning a reachable page into clean markdown. On sites that actively block bots, success depends heavily on proxy quality and rotation. WebScraping.AI is built proxy-first, giving you explicit choice of **datacenter, residential, or stealth proxies** with geotargeting, each at a published cost (1 / 5 / 10–25 / 50 credits). That control matters most when a target sits behind Cloudflare or DataDome. ### You only pay for what works This is the cleanest difference between the two. Firecrawl bills for a page that _fetches_, even if it comes back with an error status. WebScraping.AI bills **only for successful requests** — a failed scrape costs nothing. Combined with fixed, published per-request pricing, that makes costs predictable: no rolling credit forfeitures, no dynamic agent pricing, and no paying for blocked pages. ## Switching is one API call Point your requests at WebScraping.AI — here's the equivalent call in your language. **cURL** ```bash curl -G "https://api.webscraping.ai/text" \ --data-urlencode "api_key=YOUR_API_KEY" \ --data-urlencode "url=https://example.com/article" \ --data-urlencode "text_format=plain" # Response: clean page text, ready to feed to an LLM. ``` **Python** ```python # pip install webscraping_ai # https://pypi.org/project/webscraping-ai/ from webscraping_ai import Client client = Client(api_key="YOUR_API_KEY") text = client.text("https://example.com/article", text_format="plain") print(text) # Response: clean page text, ready to feed to an LLM. ``` **JavaScript** ```javascript // npm install webscraping-ai // https://www.npmjs.com/package/webscraping-ai import { WebScrapingAI } from 'webscraping-ai'; const client = new WebScrapingAI({ apiKey: 'YOUR_API_KEY' }); const text = await client.text({ url: 'https://example.com/article', text_format: 'plain', }); console.log(text); // Response: clean page text, ready to feed to an LLM. ``` **PHP** ```php text('https://example.com/article', textFormat: 'plain'); echo is_string($text) ? $text : print_r($text, true); // Response: clean page text, ready to feed to an LLM. ``` **Ruby** ```ruby # gem install webscraping_ai # https://rubygems.org/gems/webscraping_ai require 'webscraping_ai' client = WebScrapingAI::Client.new(api_key: 'YOUR_API_KEY') text = client.text('https://example.com/article', text_format: 'plain') puts text.inspect # Response: clean page text, ready to feed to an LLM. ``` **Go** ```go // go get github.com/webscraping-ai/webscraping-ai-go/v4 // https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/webscraping-ai/webscraping-ai-go/v4 package main import ( "context" "fmt" webscrapingai "github.com/webscraping-ai/webscraping-ai-go/v4" ) func main() { client, _ := webscrapingai.NewClient(&webscrapingai.Config{APIKey: "YOUR_API_KEY"}) text, _ := client.Text(context.Background(), &webscrapingai.TextOptions{ URL: "https://example.com/article", TextFormat: "plain", }) fmt.Println(text) } // Response: clean page text, ready to feed to an LLM. ``` **Java** ```java // Maven: ai.webscraping:webscraping-ai:4.2.0 // https://central.sonatype.com/artifact/ai.webscraping/webscraping-ai import ai.webscraping.Client; import ai.webscraping.Config; import ai.webscraping.option.TextOptions; Client client = new Client(Config.builder().apiKey("YOUR_API_KEY").build()); String text = client.text(TextOptions.builder() .url("https://example.com/article") .textFormat("plain") .build()); System.out.println(text); // Response: clean page text, ready to feed to an LLM. ``` **C#** ```csharp // dotnet add package WebScrapingAI // https://www.nuget.org/packages/WebScrapingAI using WebScrapingAI; var client = new WebScrapingAIClient(new WebScrapingAIClientOptions { ApiKey = "YOUR_API_KEY" }); var text = await client.TextAsync(new TextRequest { Url = "https://example.com/article", TextFormat = "plain", }); Console.WriteLine(text); // Response: clean page text, ready to feed to an LLM. ``` ### Switch to WebScraping.AI if… You scrape **protected, anti-bot sites** and want residential and stealth proxies designed for them. You want to **pay only for successful requests** , with no charges for blocked or errored pages. You want **general scraping** (HTML, text, AI Q&A, fields) — not only markdown conversion. You want a **fixed, published price** per request instead of dynamic or expiring credits. ### Stick with Firecrawl if… You need **whole-site crawl-to-markdown** (`/crawl`) to ingest entire domains for RAG. You want an **open-source, self-hostable** engine you can run yourself. You're doing **small-volume LLM prototyping** where Firecrawl's free tier and native markdown are a great fit. ## Frequently asked questions Is WebScraping.AI a good Firecrawl alternative? It is when your targets are protected. Firecrawl excels at turning reachable pages into markdown; WebScraping.AI adds production residential and stealth proxies, AI extraction, and pay-only-for-success billing, which matters most on anti-bot sites. Does WebScraping.AI return LLM-ready content like Firecrawl? Yes. The /text endpoint returns clean page text suitable for LLM input, and /ai/question and /ai/fields return answers and structured data directly. Firecrawl's native markdown is still a strong fit for whole-site RAG ingestion. How is WebScraping.AI's billing different from Firecrawl's? WebScraping.AI charges only for successful requests — failures are free. Firecrawl charges when a page fetches successfully even if it returns an error status, and its credits don't roll over month to month. Does WebScraping.AI offer pay-as-you-go pricing? Yes — prepaid credits with no subscription, from a $20 minimum top-up ($0.0002 per credit, so $20 buys 100,000 credits). Firecrawl's own FAQ rules out pay-per-use, so a subscription is the only way in there. Our credits stay valid for 12 months and each new top-up extends the entire balance another 12 months; if you also run a monthly plan, pay-as-you-go credits are only consumed after the plan quota runs out. Can WebScraping.AI crawl an entire website like Firecrawl? WebScraping.AI scrapes individual URLs you supply rather than auto-crawling a whole domain. If you need to ingest an entire site as markdown, Firecrawl's /crawl is purpose-built for that; for hard-to-reach individual pages, WebScraping.AI's residential and stealth proxies are better suited. Does WebScraping.AI handle Cloudflare and other anti-bot systems? Requests can route through rotating residential proxies (10–25 credits) or stealth proxies (50 credits), designed for protected-site scraping where residential or stealth routing is required. ## Compare other alternatives [Bright Data Alternative](https://webscraping.ai/bright-data-alternative): See how WebScraping.AI compares to Bright Data. [Apify Alternative](https://webscraping.ai/apify-alternative): See how WebScraping.AI compares to Apify. [SerpApi Alternative](https://webscraping.ai/serpapi-alternative): See how WebScraping.AI compares to SerpApi. 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