Firecrawl alternatives
Firecrawl alternatives, tested on one Wikipedia page: Firecrawl returned 112,517 tokens for the Rust article, and FATSEARCH answered the same question in 1,384, 81× less. Tavily, Jina Reader, Oxylabs and Bright Data are in the table too.
We make FATSEARCH. The numbers below are our own runs, dated. Where another reader is the better pick, we say so.
| One page, | 38 hard pages, | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reader | Tokens in context | Answer found | Model bill | Answer in the text | Agent answered right | Tokens per question |
| FATSEARCH | 1,384 | yes | $0.0028 | 35/38 | 26/38 | 2.6k |
| Firecrawl | 112,517 | yes | $0.23 | 24/38 | 24/38 | 2.8k |
| Tavily | 97,504 | yes | $0.20 | 19/38 | — | — |
| Jina Reader | 94,415 | yes | $0.19 | 8/38 | — | — |
| Oxylabs | 102,609 | yes | $0.21 | — | — | — |
| Bright Data | 103,625 | yes | $0.21 | — | — | — |
One page: Wikipedia “Rust (programming language)”, default settings, one run each. Tokens = Anthropic’s own counter; fats = outline + one filter + one section. Model bill = tokens × $2 per million input tokens (Claude Sonnet 5.5, ); reader fees not included.
Hard pages: Social, news, shops, travel, classifieds, search: pages a built-in fetch can’t read. FATSEARCH 0.1.0, 2026-10-16, one run each; Firecrawl’s copy was cut to fit the agent run. “—” = not in that run.
How we measured
- One page. : Wikipedia’s Rust article through each reader, default settings, one run. We asked who created Rust and what safe Rust guarantees. All 6 returned the answer. Token counts are from Anthropic’s tokenizer.
- Hard pages. : 38 hard pages (social, news, shops, travel, classifieds, search), picked because an agent’s built-in web fetch had failed on them. One question per page; a reader scores when the answer is in its output. Oxylabs and Bright Data weren’t in this run; FATSEARCH uses them as its paid fallback.
- One run is a sample, not a ranking. Method, page list and raw files: benchmarks.
Where Firecrawl wins, and where it doesn’t
- Firecrawl refused some of the hard pages outright: social networks, a news site, a recipe site, an airline.
- In the agent loop (Claude Haiku, one tool, Firecrawl’s text trimmed to fit), it got 24/38 right at 2.8k per question. FATSEARCH: 26/38 at 2.6k.
- Speed depends on the page. FATSEARCH had the answer for 14 hard pages within the first second, Firecrawl for 0 (FATSEARCH 0.1.3 on 2026-10-20, Firecrawl on 2026-10-16). On the 24 pages both answered, Firecrawl was faster: median 4.9 s, FATSEARCH 9.3 s. FATSEARCH tries a free plain fetch first and pays your provider only when a wall blocks it. A refusal never counts as fast: pages answered over time.
In Claude Code
We also ran Firecrawl’s hosted MCP against the FATSEARCH MCP in Claude Code (Sonnet, headless, built-in web tools off): a separate set of real pages and searches, the same tasks for both, one run each. Right answers were about the same. FATSEARCH used far fewer tokens and cost less, mostly because Claude Code sends Firecrawl’s tool list with every model call, and it was slower on blocked pages. Numbers: web scraping MCP Claude Code.
Open-source alternatives
Firecrawl’s own server is open source under the AGPL, and you can run it yourself: self-hosted, it returned 107,332 tokens for the same article. Crawl4AI is the other crawler people run locally: 74,896. Both against hosted Firecrawl: Crawl4AI vs Firecrawl. With SearXNG, open-webSearch and mcp-server-fetch: open source web search MCP.
Reader by reader
FATSEARCH
Local CLI + MCP server, your own provider key. Measured: outline, then one filter, then one section (plain HTTP, $0).
1,384 tokens across three reads. First lines:
= j11.u46 Rust (programming language) - Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · 57 sections · 6 photos · 2 videos · 40.9ktok · pl… u46#0 info | author Contributors to Wikimedia projects · published 2010-10-30T22:30:54Z · modified 2026-10-15T20:56:59Z m1 photo 250x167 png | A bright orange crab icon → https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Rustacean-or… m2 photo 250x314 png | (no alt) → https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/af/Rust_standard_libraries.svg/5… m3 photo 250x193 png | (no alt) → https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6c/Cargo_clippy_hello_world_exam… … +10 media → fats u46 media u46#1 (top) (9) | Jump to content u46#9 Syntax and features (9.2k, 27 sub) | [edit [l175] ] Main article: Rust syntax [l176] Rust's syntax [l177] is simil…
Price: $0.001–0.0065 per hard page, $0 plain pages (github.com, checked )
Firecrawl
Hosted scrape, crawl + search API (AGPL core), MCP server. Measured: v2 /scrape, markdown, default settings.
112,517 tokens, 81× what FATSEARCH used. First lines:
[Jump to content](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(programming_language)#bodyContent) [ | - [Multi-paradigm](https://en…
Price: Free: 1,000 credits a month (one scraped page = one credit). Hobby: $16 a month billed yearly ($19 monthly) for 5,000 credits. Standard: $83 a month billed yearly for 100,000. (firecrawl.dev, checked )
When it’s better: You want a whole site, not one page. Firecrawl crawls a site in one request, maps its URLs, batch-scrapes many pages and returns structured JSON or screenshots. It can also search, click through a page, and turn PDFs and DOCX into Markdown. Its core is open source under the AGPL and can be self-hosted, though some features are Cloud-only. FATSEARCH has no crawler and no DOCX yet.
Tavily
Hosted search + extract API, MCP server. Measured: /extract, basic depth.
97,504 tokens, 70× what FATSEARCH used. First lines:
[Jump to content](#bodyContent) [   ## Contents * [1 History](#History) + [1.1 2006–2009: Early years](#2006–2009:_Early_years) + [1.2 2009–2012: Mozilla sponsorship](#2009–2012:_Mozilla_sponsorship) + [1.3 2012–2015: Evolution](#2012–2015:_Evolution)
Price: Free: 1,000 API credits a month. Pay as you go: $0.008 a credit. A basic extract costs 1 credit per 5 successful URLs (advanced: 2). (tavily.com, docs.tavily.com, checked )
When it’s better: Search is the main job. Tavily is a search API for agents and can return page text with the results in one call. FATSEARCH searches too, but hands back result ids your agent opens one by one.
Jina Reader
Hosted URL-to-Markdown reader, MCP server. Measured: r.jina.ai, no key.
94,415 tokens, 68× what FATSEARCH used. First lines:
Title: Rust (programming language) URL Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(programming_language) Published Time: 2010-10-30T22:30:54Z Markdown Content: | Rust | | --- | | [ | * [Multi-paradigm](https://en…
Price: Free without a key at 20 requests a minute. With a key it is billed by output tokens; a new key comes with 10M free tokens. (jina.ai, checked )
When it’s better: Zero install, no account. Put r.jina.ai/ in front of a URL and you get Markdown back. Good for a quick one-off read in a script.
Oxylabs
Hosted scraper API + proxies, MCP server. Measured: Web Scraper API /v1/scrape, markdown, no JS.
102,609 tokens, 74× what FATSEARCH used. First lines:
[Jump to content](#bodyContent) Main menu Main menu move to sidebar hide Navigation * [Main page](/wiki/Main_Page "Visit the main page [z]") * [Contents](/wiki/Wikipedia%3AContents "Guides to browsing Wikipedia")
Price: Web Scraper API, other sites: $1.00 per 1,000 results on the Starter plan ($30 a month). $5 of free welcome credits. (oxylabs.io, checked )
When it’s better: You need whole pages at volume, including Google and Amazon, with proxies and an unblocker under one subscription.
Bright Data
Hosted unblocker API + proxies, MCP server. Measured: Web Unlocker, markdown.
103,625 tokens, 75× what FATSEARCH used. First lines:
Rust (programming language) - Wikipedia [Jump to content](#bodyContent) Main menu Main menu move to sidebar hide Navigation * [Main page](/wiki/Main_Page "Visit the main page [z]") * [Contents](/wiki/Wikipedia:Contents "Guides to browsing Wikipedia")
Price: Web Unlocker: 5,000 free requests a month, then $1.5 per 1,000 requests, pay as you go. (brightdata.com, checked )
When it’s better: You need pages that fight back, at volume. Web Unlocker handles CAPTCHAs, browser rendering and retries. You pay only for success.
Questions
What are some alternatives to Firecrawl?
The ones we tested on the same page: FATSEARCH, Tavily, Jina Reader, Oxylabs and Bright Data. Tokens on Wikipedia's Rust article: Firecrawl 112,517, Tavily 97,504, Jina 94,415, Oxylabs 102,609, Bright Data 103,625, FATSEARCH 1,384 (three reads). All found the answer.
How much does Firecrawl cost to use for scraping data?
Free: 1,000 credits a month (one scraped page = one credit). Hobby: $16 a month billed yearly ($19 monthly) for 5,000 credits. Standard: $83 a month billed yearly for 100,000. (pricing page, checked ). Plus the model bill: Firecrawl's Wikipedia copy costs $0.23 to read at $2/M input tokens. FATSEARCH: $0.0028.
Is Tavily better than Firecrawl?
On the hard pages, no: Firecrawl had the answer 24/38, Tavily 19/38. On Wikipedia, Tavily returned fewer tokens (97,504 vs 112,517). Both can search and return page text in one call; Tavily is built around search, Firecrawl around scraping and crawling.
Try FATSEARCH on your own pages
Free and open source. Bring any one key, or none.
curl -fsSL https://fatsearch.com/install.sh | shnpm i -g fatsearchbrew install fatsearch/tap/fatsearchcargo install --locked fatsearchor let your agent do it
Read and follow fatsearch.com/agent-setup/SKILL.md