Firecrawl vs. ScrapeGraphAI

Yes. Firecrawl returns clean markdown and structured JSON out of the box on every request. ScrapeGraphAI also supports structured extraction via SmartScraper and markdown via Markdownify, but these are separate endpoints with different credit costs. Firecrawl delivers both formats from a single scrape call at 1 credit per page.

Firecrawl charges 1 credit per standard scrape and 5 credits for AI-powered JSON extraction. ScrapeGraphAI charges 10 credits per SmartScraper call and 2 credits for basic Markdownify. But credits aren't equal across platforms. On Firecrawl's Standard plan ($83/mo for 100k credits/month), AI extraction costs about $0.004/page. On ScrapeGraphAI's Growth plan ($85/mo for 480k credits/year), SmartScraper costs about $0.021/page. Dollar for dollar, Firecrawl delivers roughly 5x more AI extractions.

Yes. Firecrawl is fully open source under the AGPL-3.0 license with 90k+ GitHub stars and can be self-hosted for complete control over your data and infrastructure. ScrapeGraphAI also has an open source Python library (MIT licensed, 23k stars) that works with local LLMs via Ollama, but their commercial API is proprietary.

Firecrawl supports actions like click, type, and wait directly on the scrape endpoint, and also offers a full browser sandbox with Playwright/CDP access, code execution in Python, Node, or Bash, Live View for debugging, and persistent browser profiles. ScrapeGraphAI's AgenticScraper only supports natural language steps (e.g., 'click login', 'type email') with no direct browser control. Firecrawl covers both approaches and gives developers full programmatic access when they need it.

Firecrawl offers scrape, search, browse, agent, crawl, map, and batch scrape through one API. ScrapeGraphAI covers similar ground with SmartScraper, SearchScraper, SmartCrawler, Markdownify, AgenticScraper, and Sitemap, but lacks a map/discovery endpoint and full browser sandbox. A unified platform means fewer integration points, simpler billing, and less code to maintain.

Both tools work well for RAG. Firecrawl returns clean markdown ready for chunking and embedding, supports structured extraction via JSON Schema, and offers crawl + map for discovering all pages on a site. ScrapeGraphAI's SmartScraper also delivers structured data from natural language prompts. The key difference is cost: Firecrawl's 1-credit scrape lets you process far more pages per dollar, which matters when building large knowledge bases.

Migration is straightforward. Replace your ScrapeGraphAI SmartScraper calls with Firecrawl's /scrape endpoint (with formats=['json'] for structured extraction or formats=['markdown'] for clean markdown). Replace SmartCrawler calls with Firecrawl's /crawl endpoint, which supports depth control, path filtering, and sitemap discovery. Firecrawl offers SDKs for Python, Node.js, Go, Rust, and Java. Most teams complete the switch in under a day.

Yes. Firecrawl is SOC 2 Type II compliant with GDPR compliance and DPA available. Enterprise plans include zero data retention and 99.9% SLA. ScrapeGraphAI has achieved SOC 2 Type 1 and is working toward Type 2. Over 500,000 developers and 80,000+ companies use Firecrawl in production.