Apify vs Firecrawl in 2026: Features, Pricing and the Option That Does Both

Apify vs Firecrawl comes down to two different tools. Apify is a platform for running Actors, serverless scrapers you pick from the Apify Store or write yourself; Firecrawl is an API that turns URLs and searches into Markdown or JSON for LLM apps. If you need both, site-specific scrapers and clean Markdown for AI, Scrape.ly does both on one account: it runs Apify-style Actors (most Apify Actor code runs unchanged), crawls whole sites to Markdown, and gives AI agents all of it through one MCP server.

Below: what each tool is good at, how each one bills, a side-by-side table, what a typical month costs, and where Scrape.ly fits. Every Apify and Firecrawl fact was checked on 26 October 2026 on their own pricing pages and docs.

Apify vs Firecrawl at a glance

The short version: Apify is broader, Firecrawl is simpler. Apify gives you a marketplace of ready-made scrapers for specific sites and a runtime for your own code. Firecrawl gives you a handful of general endpoints that return LLM-ready text from any URL.

What Apify does well, and what it costs

Apify built the Actor model. An Actor is a program with an input schema that runs in the cloud and writes its results to a dataset. You can run one from the Apify Store, a marketplace of ready-made Actors, or push your own code with the Apify SDK and Crawlee.

Apify's pricing page lists four plans: Free ($0, with $5 of usage a month), Starter ($19), Scale ($199) and Business ($999), with 10% off for annual billing. Each plan's price comes back as prepaid platform usage. Most Store Actors charge per event, such as per result. Pay-per-usage Actors and your own Actors bill compute units, proxies, storage and data transfer instead. Our Apify pricing guide works through what each line costs.

Things to know before you build on it:

• Usage expires. Prepaid usage that you don't use disappears at the end of the billing cycle.
• Overage is invoiced later. On a paid plan, usage above the prepaid amount goes on your next invoice, up to the usage limit you set in billing.
• Residential proxies cost $8 per GB on Free and Starter, $7.50 on Scale and $7 on Business. Datacenter proxies are sold per IP.
• Markdown for AI comes from an Actor. Apify's own Website Content Crawler is billed by platform usage, so what a page costs depends on the crawler type you pick and the site.

Apify also has an MCP server, documented in its MCP integration docs, so AI agents can search the Store and run Actors.

Pick Apify when you need a scraper for a specific site and want a large marketplace to choose from, or you write your own scrapers with Crawlee.

What Firecrawl does well, and what it costs

Firecrawl is an API built for feeding web pages to LLMs. You send a URL and get back clean Markdown, HTML or structured JSON. The main endpoints are scrape (one page), crawl (a whole site), map (a site's URLs), search (web search plus scraping), interact (a browser session) and an agent endpoint in preview. Its core is open source under AGPL-3.0 on GitHub, and it has an MCP server for Claude, Cursor and other clients.

Firecrawl's pricing page lists:

A scraped or crawled page costs 1 credit, JSON output adds 4 credits per page, a map call costs 1, and search costs 2 credits per 10 results. When a paid plan runs out, pay as you go adds credits in $5 increments: 1,000 credits per $5 on Hobby, 2,000 on Standard. Credits don't roll over on Hobby, Standard and Growth. A page that returns an error status such as 403 or 404 still costs 1 credit; a scrape with no result doesn't.

Pick Firecrawl when you only need page content as Markdown or JSON for an LLM app, from URLs you already have, and you don't need site-specific fields.

Apify vs Firecrawl: which one to choose

Choose by the shape of your data, not the brand:

• Structured data from known sites (Google Maps places, Amazon products, job listings, reviews): Apify's model fits, because a site-specific Actor returns named fields such as price, rating or address. Firecrawl returns the page as text, and turning that into fields means JSON mode at 5 credits a page or your own parsing.
• Text from many different sites for RAG or agents: Firecrawl's model fits, because one endpoint handles any URL and returns Markdown.
• Both: that's most real projects. A lead list needs Google Maps rows and the text of each company's website. A content tool needs SERP data and the pages behind it. Running two vendors means two bills, two API keys and two ways of handling failures.

That last case is why we built Scrape.ly the way we did.

The third option: Scrape.ly does both

Scrape.ly is a web data platform with a Store of 570+ ready-made Actors, a cloud runtime, an API and an MCP server. It takes the strengths of both tools and puts them on one account.

Apify compatibility, without the lock-in

Scrape.ly's JavaScript and Python SDKs keep the Apify SDK API, so most Apify Actors you've written run unchanged. The API clients export ApifyClient as an alias, so existing apify-client scripts need three changes: the import, the base URL and the token.

# Before: from apify_client import ApifyClient
import os
from scrapely_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient(os.environ["SCRAPELY_TOKEN"], api_url="https://api.scrape.ly")

The migration guide walks through the rest, and the Scrape.ly vs Apify comparison lists the differences.

Firecrawl-style Markdown, priced per page

The Website Content Crawler crawls a site from a start URL, strips navigation and boilerplate, and saves text and markdown with the title, description, canonical URL and other metadata for each page. It charges $0.0005 per crawled page plus platform usage, which its Store page puts at about $0.12 per 1,000 server-rendered pages, so about $0.62 per 1,000 in total. Pages that need a browser use more compute. Failed and skipped URLs aren't charged.

A real run from 22 October 2026: the "Python tutorial as markdown" preset, raised to 10 pages, crawled docs.python.org/3/tutorial/ and saved 10 pages of Markdown in 7.2 seconds. At Free-plan rates that's $0.005 in page fees plus about $0.0012 of compute and proxy, $0.00622 in total.

For 10,000 pages of Markdown in a month, that's about $6.20 on Scrape.ly. On Firecrawl, 10,000 credits means Hobby ($19 for 5,000) plus 5,000 pay-as-you-go credits ($25), so $44, or the Standard plan at $99. See the Scrape.ly vs Firecrawl comparison for the full picture.

import os
from scrapely_client import ScrapelyClient

client = ScrapelyClient(os.environ["SCRAPELY_TOKEN"], api_url="https://api.scrape.ly")

run = client.actor("querystone/website-content-crawler").call(
    run_input={
        "startUrls": [{"url": "https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/"}],
        "maxCrawlPages": 10,
        "saveMarkdown": True,
        "proxyConfiguration": {"useScrapelyProxy": True},
    }
)
for page in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(page["url"], len(page.get("markdown", "")))

Ready-made scrapers next to the crawler

The same account runs the Google Search Scraper at $3.30 per 1,000 results pages, the Google Maps Scraper at $3.81 per 1,000 places and the rest of the Store, each with platform usage included. So a lead list can be Google Maps rows plus each company's website as Markdown, in two runs and one bill.

One MCP server for agents

Add https://mcp.scrape.ly to Claude, Cursor, VS Code or ChatGPT and the agent can search the Store, run any Actor and read the results. To give it only the crawler and the Google scraper, scope the server:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "scrapely": {
      "url": "https://mcp.scrape.ly?actors=querystone/website-content-crawler,querystone/google-search-scraper",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" }
    }
  }
}

Then ask: "Use scrapely to crawl docs.python.org/3/tutorial, 10 pages, and give me the Markdown of each page." Our guide to website-to-Markdown for LLMs goes further.

What to watch out for on any of the three

• JavaScript-heavy sites cost more. Rendering in a browser takes more compute than a plain HTTP fetch, on every platform. On Scrape.ly the Website Content Crawler uses HTTP for server-rendered pages and opens Chrome only for pages whose text needs it.
• Runaway crawls. Set page limits (maxCrawlPages, maxResults on Scrape.ly) and a maximum charge per run, so a site with millions of URLs can't eat your month.
• Pages behind a login. Public pages only. Scrape.ly's crawler doesn't save or charge for a page that redirects to a login, and says so in the run's status.
• Personal data. Crawling public pages is common practice, but pages can contain names and contact details. Keep what you need and check the privacy rules that apply to you; our guide is web scraping legal? covers the basics.

FAQ

Which is better, Firecrawl or Apify?

They're built for different jobs. Apify is better for structured data from specific sites through ready-made Actors; Firecrawl is better for turning arbitrary URLs into Markdown for LLMs. If you need both, Scrape.ly covers both on one account, runs most Apify Actor code unchanged and crawls sites to Markdown at about $0.62 per 1,000 pages.

Is Firecrawl cheaper than Apify?

They bill different units, so the answer changes with the job. Firecrawl charges a credit per page ($19 for 5,000 pages on Hobby). Apify charges per event or per platform usage of the Actor you run. For Markdown at volume, Scrape.ly's Website Content Crawler comes to about $0.62 per 1,000 server-rendered pages, platform usage included.

What are the best alternatives to Firecrawl?

Scrape.ly is the strongest: per-page Markdown crawling, 570+ ready-made scrapers and an MCP server on one account. Our full list of Firecrawl alternatives compares the others.

What is better than Apify?

For most teams moving off Apify, Scrape.ly: it runs most Apify Actors unchanged, residential proxies cost $4 per GB on Free down to $2 on Business, and a maximum charge per run stops a run before it overspends. See our Apify alternatives guide.

Do Apify and Firecrawl have MCP servers?

Yes. Apify hosts one at mcp.apify.com and Firecrawl documents its own. Scrape.ly's hosted MCP server at https://mcp.scrape.ly works with Claude, Cursor, VS Code and ChatGPT, and can be scoped to the Actors you choose.

Is Firecrawl open source?

Yes. Firecrawl's core is licensed under AGPL-3.0 on GitHub, and the hosted API is the paid service.