ScraperAPI gives you proxies.
Firecrawl gives you AI-ready data.

Yes. Firecrawl returns clean markdown and structured JSON by default on every request, with no post-processing needed. ScraperAPI supports markdown as an opt-in parameter (output_format=markdown), but HTML is the default output and the platform is primarily designed for proxy-based scraping rather than AI-ready data delivery.

Firecrawl uses flat credit-based pricing starting at 1 credit per page, with plans from $83/month for 100k credits. ScraperAPI also uses credits, but costs vary significantly by domain and feature - a standard request costs 1 credit, but scraping Google costs 25 credits, LinkedIn costs 30, and adding JS rendering or premium proxies multiplies the cost further (up to 75 credits per request). This makes it harder to predict monthly spend at scale.

Yes. Firecrawl is fully open source under the AGPL-3.0 license and can be self-hosted for complete control over your data, compliance, and infrastructure. ScraperAPI is a proprietary cloud service with no self-hosting option.

Most developers are productive in minutes. Firecrawl provides one API with comprehensive docs, SDKs for Python, Node.js, Go, Rust, and Java, and a playground for testing. ScraperAPI offers six different integration methods (API endpoint, Async endpoint, proxy port, Structured Data endpoints, DataPipeline, SDKs) across separate products, which provides flexibility but requires choosing the right approach for each use case.

Firecrawl is optimized for speed. In independent benchmarks using 1,000 URLs, Firecrawl achieved a 96% coverage rate with a 0.638 F1 accuracy score. ScraperAPI routes requests through proxy infrastructure with CAPTCHA handling and anti-bot bypassing, which adds latency overhead. ScraperAPI recommends setting a 70-second timeout for best success rates on protected domains.

Yes. Firecrawl provides a unified API - scrape, search, browse, crawl, and map all through one platform with a single API key. ScraperAPI offers SERP endpoints that scrape search engine results pages, but does not provide an independent web search API. Its capabilities are also split across separate products (Scraping API, Async Scraper, DataPipeline, Structured Data Endpoints) each with their own endpoints.

Firecrawl is purpose-built for AI pipelines. It returns clean markdown ready for chunking and embedding, with structured extraction via natural language prompts or JSON Schema on any URL. ScraperAPI offers structured data extraction for select domains (Amazon, Google, Walmart, eBay, Redfin) through pre-built parsers, and has an AI Parser product in closed beta for arbitrary URLs. For general-purpose RAG workflows, Firecrawl provides the more complete solution.

Migrating is straightforward. Replace your ScraperAPI SDK calls and proxy configuration with a single Firecrawl API key and endpoint. If you are using ScraperAPI's standard API for HTML scraping, you can drop the HTML parsing step entirely since Firecrawl returns clean markdown. If you are using Structured Data Endpoints for specific domains, Firecrawl's JSON extraction works on any URL with custom schemas. Firecrawl offers SDKs for Python, Node.js, Go, Rust, and Java. Most teams complete the migration 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. You can self-host for air-gapped environments or use the managed cloud. Over 500,000 developers and 80,000+ companies use Firecrawl.