Firecrawl
by Firecrawl · API to search, scrape and crawl the web into markdown or structured JSON
70.8 — BenchRank score out of 100
Screenshots of Firecrawl
Homepage Pricing page
Overview
Firecrawl is an API for searching, scraping and crawling websites, returning clean markdown, HTML, screenshots, metadata or JSON matching a schema you supply. It renders JavaScript, parses PDFs and DOCX, and its Interact endpoint can click, type and navigate multi-step pages. Access is by REST, SDKs for six languages, a CLI or an MCP server.
- Best for
- Developer teams feeding live web data to AI agents, RAG pipelines and research tools via one API.
- Pricing
- Free tier of 1,000 credits per month, then credit-based monthly plans; the captured page showed no figures for Hobby, Standard or Growth and only £444/month for Scale, with Enterprise on custom pricing.
- Runs on
- WebSelf-hostedCLI
Strengths and trade-offs
Strengths
- Open source repo alongside the hosted API
- SDKs for Python, Node.js, Go, Rust, Java and Elixir, plus a CLI
- Official MCP server for Cursor, Claude and Windsurf
- Renders JavaScript and parses PDFs and DOCX without extra config
Trade-offs
- Credits do not roll over except on Scale and Enterprise plans
- No pay-per-use option; you must move to a fixed monthly plan
- Pages that return 4xx or 5xx are still charged if fetched
- Interact, the dashboard and Fire-engine are hosted-only, not open source
Pricing
Published plans from Firecrawl’s own pricing page, in GBP. Usage charges and add-ons may apply on top.
| Plan | Monthly | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Free Plan | —per account |
|
| Hobby | —per account |
|
| Standard | —per account |
|
| Growth | —per account |
|
| Scale | £444per account |
|
| Enterprise | Contact sales |
|
How this score is made up
Each dimension is scored out of 100 and combined into the headline score using fixed weights.
- MCP support
- 60 out of 100
- API quality
- 45 out of 100
- Documentation
- 90 out of 100
- Agent friendliness
- 58 out of 100
- Pricing transparency
- 90 out of 100
- Changelog
- 100 out of 100
- Marketing site structure
- 75 out of 100
- Operational trust
- 70 out of 100
Measured, but not part of the score
Useful to know, but not a mark for or against the product — so these do not affect the ranking.
- Openness
- 65 out of 100
- Maintenance
- 100 out of 100
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