Web data & extraction · head to head

Firecrawl vs Apify

API-first web data scraping platform  vs  Cloud web scraping and automation. Specs, capabilities, and what real users said in the last year, lined up.

The verdict

Firecrawl is a developer-first API primitive: call clean endpoints for scrape, crawl, search, and extraction with LLM-ready Markdown out. Apify is a platform of pre-built Actors: thousands of site-specific scrapers with scheduling, storage, and proxies around them. If you're feeding AI pipelines from code, Firecrawl wins; if you want ready-made scrapers for known sites running on a schedule, Apify does.

Both pull web data at scale. The split is primitive versus marketplace: Firecrawl gives you clean general-purpose endpoints, Apify gives you packaged scrapers plus the infrastructure to run them.

Meet the two

Firecrawl Web data & extraction

Firecrawl is an API-first web data layer for scraping, crawling, mapping, extraction, browser tasks, and search. It handles difficult web pages and returns cleaner content for downstream AI systems.

Our take

Turns messy web pages into clean, structured content your AI tools and research workflows can actually use, priced by the credit.

Price$16 per month (Hobby, annual, 5,000 pages)Free tierYes, 1,000 credits

Reach for it if GTM and RevOps teams that want live website content flowing into research, monitoring, and AI workflows, with someone technical to set it up.

Read the full Firecrawl review
Apify Web data & extraction

Apify is a cloud platform for web scraping, data extraction, browser automation, and repeatable data workflows. Its central unit is the Actor: a packaged task with structured input, execution, storage, API access, and scheduling.

Our take

A marketplace of ready-made web scrapers you can run on repeat, worth it when someone owns the setup and watches the usage bill.

Price$29/month (Starter) plus usageFree tierYes, $5/mo usage allowance

Reach for it if GTM teams that need the same web data collected on repeat, such as lead lists, competitor pricing, or market monitoring, and can name an owner for the job.

Read the full Apify review

Specs & price

Firecrawl Web data & extraction

API-first web data scraping platform

Apify Web data & extraction

Cloud web scraping and automation

$Starting price$16 per month (Hobby, annual, 5,000 pages)$29/month (Starter) plus usage
◇Free tierYes, 1,000 creditsYes, $5/mo usage allowance
▤Pricing modelCredits, metered per page, browser minute, or search resultPlan floor plus metered usage units
◎Best forGTM teams feeding live web content into AI workflowsRecurring lead lists, price and market monitoring
⛓Key integrationsAPI first; direct link into Claude-style AI assistants (MCP)Zapier, Make, n8n, webhooks, REST API
⚠Watch out forUnpredictable credit burn from crawl depth, browser minutes, and retriesMetered usage climbs with heavy pages and retries

Rows with a marked spine differ. Specs come from each tool’s own docs and our research ledger.

Feature checklist

FirecrawlApify
Crawls whole websites✓multi-page crawl endpoint–
Handles JavaScript-heavy pages✓browser tasks endpoint–
Prebuilt scrapers per site✕generic endpoints–
Clean AI-ready page content✓markdown output–
Gets past bot-blocking✓handles difficult pages–
Web search results pull✓search endpoint–
Free tier✓1,000 credits✓$5/mo usage allowance
API access✓SDKs + MCP✓Yes
Pre-built scraper marketplace–✓ready-made Actors
Build-your-own scraping jobs–✓custom Actors
Handles JavaScript-heavy sites–✓browser automation included
Scheduled repeat runs–✓same job on a schedule
Structured data output–✓datasets ready to pipe onward
Managed proxies available–✓separate usage cost
No-code tool connections–✓Zapier, Make, n8n

A capability either ships (✓), doesn’t (✕), or ships partway (≈). Differences carry a marked spine.

What users actually say

Firecrawl, in users’ words

Firecrawl was the most consistent overall. It handled most of the heavy stuff better and I had fewer cases where important parts of the page were missing.
onlyleftusername4me, Web extraction testerReddit r/WebScrapingInsider · August 11, 2026 ↗
the best one is Firecrawl … the MCP setup was easy and the output is very clean for my use case and the pricing was easier to follow.
Tiny_Risk6738, Claude Code userReddit r/ClaudeMCP · July 10, 2026 ↗

Apify, in users’ words

Apify is an infinite bank of scraping providers for any purpose, all through a single account. Excellent for scraping creatives and competitor sites.
10x Marketers member10x Marketers community · 2026-08
In our agency we use a few Apify scrapers for clients lead gen … once it's running I'd [say] Apify is the most affordable and reliable.
Money-Ranger-6520, Agency operatorReddit r/webdev · April 2, 2026 ↗

Which one, for you

Pick Firecrawl when

you're building RAG ingestion, agents, or research pipelines that need clean markdown from arbitrary pages.

Pick Apify when

you need repeatable, scheduled extraction from specific sites and would rather run proven Actors than write code.