Tool profile
Firecrawl: cost, fit and limits
Firecrawl is a web data API made by SideGuide Technologies, Inc. (d/b/a Firecrawl) in the United States that turns websites into Markdown, HTML, screenshots or structured JSON for AI applications and agents, with an open-source version that can be self-hosted.
What to know first
Firecrawl sells credits: the free plan gives 1,000 a month, Hobby gives 5,000 for $16 per month billed annually ($19 monthly), and Standard gives 100,000 for $99. One credit covers one basic page scrape, crawl or map. Beyond scraping it offers search, document parsing, a managed browser and an agent that gathers data from a description. Zero-data retention is an Enterprise feature.
Firecrawl at a glance
| Maker | SideGuide Technologies, Inc. (d/b/a Firecrawl), United States |
|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes |
| Entry price | $16 per month for Hobby, billed annually ($19 billed monthly) |
| API access | Yes |
| Category | Best AI Web Scraping Tools in 2026, rank 1 of 12 |
| Website | firecrawl.dev |
Who Firecrawl is best for
Builders of retrieval or agent pipelines
Scrape returns clean Markdown or JSON from JavaScript-rendered pages, which is the format language model pipelines usually want, without a separate rendering step.
Teams that need whole-site collection
Crawl gathers every subpage with path filters and depth limits, and Map lists a site's URLs first, so a team can see the scope and cost before spending credits.
Engineers who prefer to self-host
The product is open source and can be self-hosted, which suits a team that wants to run the code itself and pay the hosted price only for managed scale.
Firecrawl plans and pricing
| Plan | Price | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0, no credit card | 1,000 credits a month, 2 concurrent requests and community support, with no pay-as-you-go option and the lowest rate limits of any plan. |
| Hobby | $19 per month, or $16 billed annually | 5,000 credits a month, 5 concurrent requests, basic support and pay as you go for extra credits, with 100 scrape requests a minute. |
| Standard | $99 per month, or $83 billed annually | 100,000 credits a month, 25 concurrent requests, standard support and pay as you go. The page marks it as recommended. |
| Growth | $399 per month, or $333 billed annually | 500,000 credits a month, 50 concurrent requests, priority support, Slack support and a queue of up to 100,000 jobs. |
| Scale | $749 per month, or $599 billed annually | 1,000,000 credits a month, 100 concurrent requests, priority and Slack support, and unused credits carried over for one month. |
Checked October 2026.
What Firecrawl does
- Scrape and Crawl
- Scrape converts a page, including JavaScript-rendered ones, into Markdown, HTML, screenshots or structured JSON. Crawl collects every subpage of a site with path filters and depth limits.
- Search and Parse
- Search returns live web results with full page content and filters for date, domain, country and PDFs, while Parse reads PDF and DOCX files, with OCR for scanned pages.
- Interact
- Interact runs a managed browser for clicking, typing, form filling and scrolling, and Firecrawl describes it as scraping a page and then acting on it by prompt or code.
- Agent
- Agent takes a description of the data needed and gathers it, and URLs are optional, which helps when the source pages are not known in advance.
- Monitor
- Monitor watches pages, scheduled crawls or searches and sends alerts by webhook, email or Slack, so a team can track changes to competitor or documentation pages.
How Firecrawl handles your data
The trust center at trust.firecrawl.dev returned only its page title, so its statements on certifications, retention, hosting and AI training could not be read. The pricing page lists zero-data retention, SSO and advanced security as Enterprise features, and it states neither a retention period nor a hosting region. The privacy policy was not opened, and no statement on training AI models with customer data was found on the pages read, so the vendor's policy was not checked for it.
Where Firecrawl falls short in practice
- Rate limits by plan. Free allows 10 requests per minute on scrape, map and search and 2 per minute on crawl and agent, and Hobby allows 100 and 20, so a large crawl on a low plan runs slowly.
- Credits mostly expire. Credits do not roll over on Hobby, Standard and Growth, and only Scale carries unused credits for one extra month, which penalizes uneven monthly demand.
- Enterprise-only controls. SSO, SCIM and zero-data retention sit on Enterprise, so a regulated team cannot get them on the self-serve plans priced above and must talk to sales about a contract.
Works with
Alternatives to Firecrawl
Firecrawl: common questions
How many pages does a Firecrawl credit buy?
One credit covers one basic page scrape, crawl or map, according to our category entry. The pricing page lists credits, not pages, and the cost of features like Interact or Agent is not spelled out in the text we read. Run a small job and compare the credit counter.
Is there a free Firecrawl plan?
Yes. The free plan gives 1,000 credits a month, 2 concurrent requests and community support with no credit card. Pay as you go is not available on it. Rate limits are 10 requests a minute on scrape, map and search and 2 on crawl and agent.
Can I self-host Firecrawl?
The site describes the product as open source and says it can be self-hosted. The pages read do not compare the self-hosted version with the hosted API feature by feature, so check which hosted features, such as the managed browser, are missing before you plan an install.
Which Firecrawl tier keeps no data after a job?
Zero-data retention is listed as an Enterprise feature on the pricing page, next to SSO and advanced security. The pages read give no retention period for other tiers, so a team with confidentiality requirements should ask for the retention terms in writing.
What does Firecrawl cost at 100,000 pages?
Standard gives 100,000 credits a month for $99, or $83 a month billed annually, with 25 concurrent requests. If one credit equals one basic scrape, that covers roughly 100,000 pages. Pages that use heavier features may use more credits, which the pricing page does not itemize.