BestAIScraper

Firecrawl vs ScrapingBee

Firecrawl is an AI extraction API, while ScrapingBee is a Scraping API. Firecrawl fits best for: Developers building LLM/RAG apps or agents who want clean markdown or JSON from any URL with minimal setup. ScrapingBee fits best for: Developers who want a predictable, easy scraping API that handles rendering and proxies without managing infrastructure.

FirecrawlScrapingBee
TypeAI extraction APIScraping API
Starting price$19/mo$19/mo
Free tier1,000 credits/month, 2 concurrent requests, no credit card1,000 free API credits trial, no credit card
Pricing modelcreditscredits per successful request
AI extraction
Structured JSON
JS rendering
Proxies / anti-bot
API
No-code UI
Open source
MCP server
Best forDevelopers building LLM/RAG apps or agents who want clean markdown or JSON from any URL with minimal setup.Developers who want a predictable, easy scraping API that handles rendering and proxies without managing infrastructure.
Visit FirecrawlVisit ScrapingBee

Why choose Firecrawl

  • Scrape, crawl, map and search endpoints
  • Clean markdown output for LLMs
  • LLM-based JSON extraction with a schema or prompt
  • Agent endpoint (preview) and browser interact sessions

Watch out for

  • JSON extraction costs 5x a plain scrape (1 + 4 credits)
  • No pay-as-you-go on the free plan
  • Self-hosted version lacks some cloud-only features

Why choose ScrapingBee

  • Headless Chrome rendering with JS scenarios
  • Rotating and premium/stealth proxies
  • AI extraction via natural-language ai_query
  • CSS/XPath extract rules to JSON

Watch out for

  • JS rendering is on by default and costs 5x a plain request
  • Premium/stealth proxies multiply credit costs quickly
  • Hobby plan has low credits once JS + premium proxy are used
Our product

Only need structured JSON from pages?

BestAIScraper's extraction API takes a URL and a list of fields and returns typed JSON. Pay per use, no subscription.

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