Apify vs Firecrawl
Apify and Firecrawl are both automation AI tools, tracked here on price, platforms, integrations, and capabilities. Every figure below is read from the vendor's own pages and dated. No score and no winner: the facts do the picking.
Cheapest paid tier each vendor publishes. Free plans are listed above; tiers priced on request are not plotted because there is no figure to plot.
Apify
Marketplace of tools for web data and AI
Apify is a cloud platform featuring thousands of serverless web scraping and data extraction tools called Actors. It provides real-time web data for AI models, competitor research, and lead generation.
Firecrawl
Open-source context API to search, scrape, and interact with the web
Firecrawl provides an API and CLI that search, scrape, crawl, and interact with websites to produce LLM-ready clean Markdown or structured JSON. It handles JavaScript rendering, document parsing for PDFs and DOCX files, and multi-step browser actions without requiring local browser setups. The service connects directly with AI agent workflows through an official MCP server and native SDKs.
At a glance
Capability tags are factual labels we assign when a tool is added; they describe what a tool does, not how well it does it.
Checked against the vendors. Written from each vendor's own site and last re-checked there: Apify on September 9, 2026 · Firecrawl on September 7, 2026. Vendors change pricing and features without notice, so confirm anything that decides your purchase on the vendor's page.
Also in automation
A tool we have an affiliate relationship with. It is not part of the comparison above and we are not calling it the better pick.
- Delegating administrative work through iMessage or SMS
- Triaging email inboxes and drafting contextual replies
- Automating calendar scheduling, meeting recaps, and CRM updates
Key features
Apify
- Thousands of ready-to-run Actors for web data and automation
- Hosted Model Context Protocol server for AI agent integration
- Scalable cloud storage designed for web scraping
- IP proxy rotation and anti-blocking solutions
Firecrawl
- Search endpoint returning full-page Markdown content
- Scrape endpoint with automatic JavaScript rendering and JSON schema extraction
- Interact endpoint supporting browser automation like clicks, scrolls, and form fills
- Document parsing for PDF, DOCX, and other file formats
- Official MCP server and CLI for coding assistants and agents
What each one does well
Apify
- ✓ Scraping websites and extracting structured data
- ✓ Feeding live web content into AI models and LLMs
- ✓ Automating workflows across social media, e-commerce, and search engines
Firecrawl
- ✓ AI agent live web search and deep research pipelines
- ✓ Converting complex JS-rendered web pages to clean Markdown
- ✓ Automating multi-step browser flows behind logins or forms
People also ask
Which is cheaper, Apify or Firecrawl?
Neither. Apify and Firecrawl both start at $19/mo.
Does Apify or Firecrawl have a free plan?
Both. Apify and Firecrawl each publish a free plan.
What is the difference between Apify and Firecrawl?
Both are tracked for ai-agents, developer-api, workflow-automation. Of the capabilities they do not share, only Apify is tracked for app-integration, and only Firecrawl is tracked for ai-search, documents.
How much do Apify and Firecrawl cost?
Apify: free plan, then $19/mo. Firecrawl: free plan, then $19/mo.
Answers are generated from the tracked plans and capability tags shown above, so they move when the vendors' pages do.
Full fact sheets, FAQs, and discussion links: Apify · Firecrawl · all automation tools