Firecrawl vs. Scrapfly

Yes. Firecrawl returns clean markdown and structured JSON out of the box on every request. Scrapfly returns raw HTML by default and offers markdown as an optional format parameter. For structured extraction, Scrapfly requires a separate Extraction API call with the HTML body, while Firecrawl handles extraction inline with a single request.

No. Scrapfly only offers a single-page scrape endpoint. Firecrawl provides /search (web search with full content extraction), /scrape (single-page with LLM-ready output), and /browser (cloud browser sessions for complex interactions) all in one unified API. With Scrapfly, you would need to find URLs externally, scrape each page individually, and use a separate Extraction API to parse the results.

Firecrawl uses simple credit-based pricing: 1 credit per standard scrape, with plans from $83/month for 100k credits. Scrapfly also uses credits, but the cost per request varies: a basic scrape costs 1 credit, enabling cloud browsers adds 5 credits, and residential proxies add 25 credits. A single request to a protected site can cost 31+ credits, making total costs harder to predict.

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 data, compliance, and infrastructure. Scrapfly's core platform is proprietary. They open-source example scrapers and developer tools, but the scraping infrastructure itself cannot be self-hosted.

Most developers are productive in minutes. Firecrawl has one API key, one unified endpoint, and SDKs for Python, Node.js, Go, Rust, and Java. Scrapfly requires configuring proxy pools, credit budgets, and rendering options per request, which provides flexibility but adds setup complexity.

Yes. Firecrawl's /search endpoint performs web search and optionally scrapes the full content of each result in a single API call. Scrapfly does not have a web search endpoint. You would need to use a separate search service, then pass each URL to Scrapfly's scrape API individually.

Firecrawl is purpose-built for AI pipelines. It returns clean markdown ready for chunking and embedding, supports structured extraction via prompts or JSON Schema, and lets you search the web, scrape pages, and browse dynamic sites all through one unified API. Scrapfly focuses on web scraping infrastructure (proxies, browsers, rendering) and serves a broader set of use cases. Its AI features are available through a separate Extraction API rather than being integrated into the core scrape flow.

Migrating is straightforward. Replace your Scrapfly API calls (with proxy_pool, render_js, and country parameters) with a single Firecrawl /scrape call that returns clean markdown. No proxy pools to configure, no credit multipliers to calculate, and no separate extraction step. For site-wide scraping, replace your URL discovery logic and per-page scrape loops with a single /crawl call. 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.