Using Firecrawl to search the web for an agent? A search-native API is the alternative: SERPdive returns extracted, answer-ready content in one call — 60.7% of decided blind duels won vs Tavily's default search on a public benchmark, 20.2% fewer tokens, $5/1k credits. Using Firecrawl to scrape and crawl sites? Stay with a scraper: Firecrawl itself, Crawl4AI (open source), Apify or ScrapingBee. A search API does not replace scraping infrastructure, and pretending otherwise is how comparison pages lie.
The two Firecrawls
Firecrawl's reputation is deserved: point it at a site and get clean, LLM-ready markdown back — crawling, JS rendering, structured extraction included, with a source-available core you can self-host. Its five surfaces (scrape, crawl, map, search, extract) are scraping tools; search arrived later and works scraper-style: the search endpoint costs 2 credits per 10 results and returns URLs, and reading those pages bills per page scraped (as of July 2026).
That architecture is exactly right when the pages are the product. It is expensive and slow when the answer is the product — an agent asking “what changed in the EU AI Act this month?” doesn't want ten URLs and a scraping bill, it wants the sentences that answer.
If your Firecrawl usage is really web search
SERPdive is a search-native API: one POST /v1/search with a question, and the response is content already extracted from the live pages that answer it, sized for a context window. No second call, no per-page scraping meter running. Two models — Mako (fast, 1 credit) and Moby (deeper full-page context, 1.5 credits) — and a hosted MCP server for Claude, Cursor and friends.
The cost shape is the point: 1,000 searches with extraction included cost 1,000 credits — $5 at the launch rate. The same 1,000 questions through a search-then-scrape loop cost search credits plus a page meter, plus the latency of doing it in two hops.
If your Firecrawl usage is really scraping
Then compare scrapers, not search APIs. The honest short list, as of July 2026:
- Firecrawl itself — still the best DX in the category; free 1,000 credits/month, paid from $16/month.
- Crawl4AI — the open-source favorite; you run it, you own it, $0 licence.
- Apify — a marketplace of thousands of maintained scrapers ("actors") when your target has one.
- ScrapingBee / Zyte — proxy-and-render APIs when anti-bot pressure is the actual problem.
- You ingest known sites into a RAG store — crawling whole domains into markdown is its core competence.
- You need JS rendering, screenshots or structured extraction from specific pages.
- You want the option to self-host the scraping layer for compliance.
Search-for-agents, side by side
| SERPdive | Firecrawl (search) | Tavily | Exa | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Built as | Search API | Scraper with search endpoint | Search API | Semantic index |
| One call returns | Extracted answers | URLs (pages billed extra) | Snippets / raw content | Results (+ billed contents) |
| 1k searches w/ content | $5 (launch) | 200 credits + 1/page scraped | $8–16 payg | $7 + $1/1k pages |
| Scrape a given URL | No | Yes — its real job | Yes (extract) | Yes (contents) |
| Self-hostable | No | Core is | No | No |
If the question is the input, get the answer in one call. 1,000 free searches a month, no card.
Get your free API keyFrequently asked questions
What is the best Firecrawl alternative?
Split the question. If you use Firecrawl to search the web for agents, a search-native API like SERPdive returns extracted answers in one call, with a public quality benchmark behind it. If you use it to scrape known URLs or crawl sites, look at Crawl4AI (open source), Apify, or ScrapingBee — that is genuinely Firecrawl's home turf and a search API won't replace it.
Is Firecrawl a search API?
Secondarily. Firecrawl is scraping infrastructure first — scrape, crawl, map, extract — and its search endpoint (2 credits per 10 results, as of July 2026) returns result URLs that you typically then scrape, each page billed. A search-native API collapses that loop: one call, extracted content back.
How much does Firecrawl search actually cost per 1,000 searches?
The endpoint alone: 2 credits per 10 results → 200 credits per 1,000 searches. But with page scraping on top (1 credit per page), 1,000 searches that each read 5 pages cost 5,200 credits. On the $16/month Hobby plan that is most of your monthly allowance. SERPdive's equivalent — search plus extraction included — is 1,000 credits, $5 pay-as-you-go.
Can SERPdive scrape a specific URL like Firecrawl does?
No — SERPdive is search-only: you send a question, not a URL. If your workload is “fetch and clean these known pages”, keep a scraper. Many teams run both: a search API for questions, a scraper for ingestion pipelines.
Is there an open-source Firecrawl alternative?
For scraping, yes: Crawl4AI is the most active open-source option, and Firecrawl's own core is source-available and self-hostable. For live web search there is no serious self-hosted option — you would be operating your own crawler and index, which is the product you were trying to buy.