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Firecrawl

PublishedJun 12, 2026Last updatedOct 16, 2026

Firecrawl is an open-source web crawling and scraping API that turns entire websites into clean, LLM-ready markdown or structured data for AI applications.

Firecrawl is a powerful, open-source web data API that turns web pages into clean, LLM-ready data for AI applications. Firecrawl handles crawling, scraping, and data extraction at scale.

Key Features:

LLM-Ready Output - Convert web pages to clean markdown, JSON, or structured data instantly
Multi-Mode Extraction - Scrape single pages, crawl entire sites, search the web, or map domains
AI Agent Endpoint - Gather web data with a single natural language prompt
Screenshot Capture - Generate visual snapshots alongside extracted content
MCP Integration - Give AI coding agents reliable access to real-time web data

Whether you're building AI applications, training LLMs, or powering RAG pipelines, Firecrawl provides the web data infrastructure you need.

Reviewed profile

Quick verdict

Firecrawl fits AI teams that want one API for scraping, crawling, search, screenshots, and structured extraction. The main caveat is its AGPL-licensed core if you need permissive embedding.

Best for: LLM-ready markdown and JSON
RAG and agent workflows
One API for crawl and scrape
Hosted API with open-source core
Not ideal for: Permissive-license requirements
Strict self-hosting control
Contract-level uptime review
Last verified: Jan 24, 2026

Key facts

SDKsJavaScript, Python, Go, and Rust SDKsProject docs

Categories:

AI Web Scraping Scraping APIs

Features:

LLM-Ready OutputMarkdown OutputStructured ExtractionAI ExtractionScreenshot CaptureREST APIOpen Source

Tags:

open-source

Alternatives:Best Firecrawl alternatives

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Source code

firecrawl/firecrawl

Stars
191.9K
Forks
10.1K
Last commit
2026-10-15
License
AGPL-3.0-or-later
Language
TypeScript

Metrics recorded 2026-10-16

Repository details

License source: Repository license file

View Repository

Frequently asked questions

What problems does Firecrawl solve?

Firecrawl provides APIs to search, scrape and crawl web content, returning Markdown or structured data for applications and AI workflows. Its Cloud service manages the fetching infrastructure; the open-source version lets you operate the core API stack yourself.

Sources (checked Oct 2, 2026): Firecrawl introduction; Open source and Cloud

Can Firecrawl be self-hosted?

Yes. Firecrawl documents a Docker Compose setup for its open-source stack. Self-hosting gives you responsibility for infrastructure, security, storage and upgrades. The default stack does not include every Cloud capability, so review the edition comparison before relying on feature parity.

Sources (checked Oct 2, 2026): Firecrawl self-hosting; Edition comparison

Can you use Firecrawl for free?

Firecrawl Cloud’s published Free plan offers 1,000 credits per month. Endpoints and advanced features consume credits at different rates, so that allowance is not a guarantee of 1,000 arbitrary operations. Self-hosting instead brings infrastructure and any external-provider costs.

Sources (checked Oct 2, 2026): Firecrawl Free plan and credits; Self-hosted cost responsibilities

What are the limitations of Firecrawl?

Cloud usage is constrained by credits, concurrency and plan limits. The open-source default stack has different capabilities from Cloud, including limits around managed anti-bot services and interactive features. Neither the edition comparison nor the credit model establishes guaranteed access to every protected page.

Sources (checked Oct 2, 2026): Firecrawl plan limits; Open-source capability boundaries

What are the key differences between Crawl4AI and Firecrawl?

Crawl4AI offers an embeddable Python crawler as well as a hosted Cloud service. Firecrawl exposes its scraping and crawling capabilities through an API, available through Cloud or a self-hosted stack. Compare the Python-library or API integration you need and each deployment’s documented feature set.

Sources (checked Oct 2, 2026): Crawl4AI Python and Cloud; Firecrawl deployment options