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AI Tool Comparison

Apify vs Firecrawl

A side-by-side breakdown to help you pick the right tool for your workflow.

Apify logo

Apify

Pull structured data from any website using 30,000+ ready-made scrapers and managed proxies, without running your own servers. Now has an MCP server so agents can invoke Actors directly.

Automation
freemium
Visit site Full review →
Firecrawl logo

Firecrawl

Convert websites into clean markdown or structured data through a purpose-built scraping API for AI applications, with a credit-based subscription and self-hosted open-source option.

Developer Tools
freemium
Visit site Full review →

Bottom Line

Apify and Firecrawl are rated evenly — the right pick comes down to which workflow you're running.

Choose Apify if…

Automation

Choose Firecrawl if…

Developer Tools

AttributeApifyFirecrawl
CategoryAutomationDeveloper Tools
Pricingfreemiumfreemium
Pricing DetailFree ($5 credits) / $29/mo Starter / $199/mo ScaleFree / $19/mo Hobby / $99/mo Standard
Rating4.64.6

Key Features

Apify

  • 2,000+ pre-built scrapers (Actors)
  • AI web scraping from natural language
  • Proxy management
  • Scheduled runs
  • API and webhooks

Firecrawl

  • Crawl and scrape via API
  • LLM-ready markdown/JSON
  • Handles JS and anti-bot
  • Structured extraction

Pros

Apify

  • Largest library of pre-built scrapers anywhere
  • AI can scrape any site without code
  • Reliable proxy rotation
  • Excellent for large-scale data collection

Firecrawl

  • Reliable managed scraping
  • Great LLM output
  • Simple API

Cons

Apify

  • Can get expensive for high usage
  • Some sites actively block scraping
  • Setup complexity for custom scrapers

Firecrawl

  • Usage-based costs
  • Rate limits on free tier

Read the Full Reviews

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