The 7 best Firecrawl alternatives for AI data extraction in 2025

Firecrawl certainly made a name for itself by making it easier to turn any website into clean, LLM-ready data. It’s a handy tool for developers building AI applications.

But let's be real, it’s not the perfect fit for every situation. Maybe the credit-based pricing is giving your budget a headache, you’ve spent a weekend wrestling with the self-hosted version, or you're realizing that scraping data is just the first messy step in a much bigger project. If you're looking for something cheaper, more powerful, or an all-in-one solution for a specific goal like automating customer support, you’ve come to the right place.

We’ve done the homework and waded through the options to bring you the top 7 Firecrawl alternatives for 2025. This guide will help you find the right tool for your AI data extraction needs, whether you're a developer, a startup, or a support leader.

What is Firecrawl and why look for Firecrawl alternatives?

At its core, Firecrawl is an API and open-source tool built to scrape and crawl websites. It takes messy web pages and turns them into clean, structured formats like Markdown, which is perfect for feeding into Large Language Models (LLMs). It’s made for developers who need to get raw data to power their AI apps.

So, why are so many people looking for a change? It usually boils down to a few common frustrations:

• The cost can be unpredictable. The hosted version uses a credit system. That’s fine when you’re just starting, but the costs can creep up on you once you start scraping more pages or entire websites. Budgeting for it isn't always straightforward.

• Self-hosting is a hassle.

"While it's great that Firecrawl is open-source, a lot of people have found the self-hosted version to be buggy, tough to manage, and not quite as capable as the paid cloud version."

, Reddit

You can feel stuck between a high price tag and a high-maintenance setup.

• It’s a tool, not a complete solution. Firecrawl gets you the data, but then its job is done. You’re still on the hook for building and maintaining your own AI application, data pipelines, and everything else that comes after. That’s a lot of extra time and resources.

• The data is generic. The tool gives you raw data, which is fine, but it doesn't know why you need it. If your goal is to build an AI support agent, you have to do all the heavy lifting to turn that generic data into something that can actually answer a customer's question.

How we chose the best Firecrawl alternatives

To put this list together, we focused on what actually matters when you're trying to wrangle data for an AI project. We looked beyond the feature list to the whole experience.

• How easy is it to actually use? Can you get up and running quickly? Is it built just for senior developers, or can someone less technical get some value out of it?

• Is the data ready for AI? How well does the tool prep data for LLMs, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and other AI workflows? Does it just dump raw text on you, or does it offer a more complete package?

• Can it handle the heavy lifting? Can it scrape thousands of pages without breaking a sweat? Is it reliable enough to use in a live product?

• What's the pricing like? Is it clear and predictable? Does it feel like a fair deal for what you’re getting, whether you're a solo dev or a big company?

• Does it do anything unique? We looked for tools that brought something extra to the table, like a no-code interface, clever ways to get past blocks, or an all-in-one platform for a specific job.

Firecrawl alternatives comparison table

Here’s a quick breakdown of how our top picks compare.

Tool	Best For	Pricing Model	Key Feature
eesel AI	Customer support teams	Subscription (no per-resolution fees)	All-in-one AI agent platform (no scraping needed)
Crawl4AI	Developers wanting full control	Free (Open-source)	Local LLM support & data sovereignty
Apify	Enterprise-scale projects	Subscription / Usage-based	Massive library of pre-built "Actors"
ScrapeGraphAI	Teams focused on resilience	Free (Open-source) / Usage-based	Self-healing scrapers using natural language
Bright Data	Projects needing robust infrastructure	Usage-based	Comprehensive proxy and unblocking tools
Jina AI Reader	Quick, simple extractions	Freemium	"URL-to-Markdown" with a single API call
DIY Playwright	Complex, custom automation	Free (Open-source)	Maximum flexibility and control

The 7 best Firecrawl alternatives in 2025

1. eesel AI

Instead of just handing you raw data and wishing you luck, eesel AI gives you the entire solution for a very specific, high-value problem: customer support. If your main goal is to build an AI support agent but you want to skip the headache of scraping, building data pipelines, and training an AI from the ground up, this is the way to go. It connects directly to your knowledge sources like help centers, past tickets, Confluence, and Google Docs in just a few minutes, powering a fully autonomous AI agent right inside your help desk.

What makes it stand out:

• It connects to your knowledge instantly. With one-click integrations for helpdesks like Zendesk and Freshdesk, wikis, and internal docs, you don't have to manually scrape and juggle different data sources.

• You can go live in minutes. It’s a truly self-serve platform. You can build, test, and deploy a complete AI agent without ever having to schedule a sales demo.

• Test it without any risk. You can run a simulation on thousands of your historical tickets to see exactly how the AI will perform and calculate your ROI before it ever talks to a real customer.

• You're in complete control. It includes a full workflow engine so you can customize the AI's personality, decide exactly which tickets it should handle, and create custom actions to do things like look up order info in Shopify or triage tickets automatically.

Pricing:

eesel AI's pricing is straightforward and based on interactions, not resolutions, so you always know what your bill will be.

• Team: $299/month ($239/mo if billed annually) for up to 1,000 AI interactions and 3 bots.

• Business: $799/month ($639/mo if billed annually) for up to 3,000 AI interactions, unlimited bots, and advanced features like training on past tickets and AI Actions.

• Custom: Custom plans are available for unlimited interactions and advanced enterprise needs.

Who is it for?: Customer support and IT leaders who need a complete, ready-to-go AI agent and would rather not deal with the technical mess of building one from scratch.

2. Crawl4AI

Crawl4AI is a powerful, open-source Python library that has become a developer favorite because of its flexibility. If you liked the idea of Firecrawl's open-source version but got frustrated with its limitations, this might be the alternative you've been searching for.

What makes it stand out:

• It’s truly open-source. It has a permissive Apache 2.0 license and a fully transparent codebase. You can see exactly how it works and tweak it however you need.

• You can extract data with or without an LLM. You can use classic CSS selectors for straightforward jobs or plug in local and cloud-based LLMs for more complex structured data extraction.

• You own your data. The ability to run completely offline with local models is a huge win for privacy-focused teams that need to keep their data on their own servers.

Pricing:

Crawl4AI is free. Just remember to account for the cost of running your own infrastructure (servers, proxies) and any API fees if you decide to use an external LLM instead of a local one.

Who is it for?: Technical teams and developers who want total control over their data pipeline, prefer to self-host, and have the in-house skills to manage an open-source tool.

3. Apify

Apify is much more than a simple scraping tool; it’s a full-blown platform for web automation and data extraction. Its biggest strength is its "Actor" marketplace, which is filled with thousands of pre-built scrapers for common websites and tasks. This makes it a great option for teams that need a reliable, scalable solution with enterprise-level support.

What makes it stand out:

• It has a "Website Content Crawler." Apify offers a specific Actor that does pretty much exactly what Firecrawl does: it turns website content into clean, AI-ready text.

• There's a huge library of pre-built scrapers. You can save a ton of development time by using ready-made scrapers for everything from social media and Google Maps to e-commerce sites.

• It handles the messy parts for you. Apify manages proxy rotation, browser fingerprinting, and scaling for large jobs, so you don't have to.

Pricing:

Apify's pricing is a mix of a monthly subscription and pay-as-you-go usage.

• Free: $5 in platform credits each month.

• Starter: $39/month, which includes $39 in usage credits.

• Scale: $199/month, which includes $199 in usage credits.

• Business: $999/month, which includes $999 in usage credits.

You pay extra for things like compute units, proxies, and storage as you use them.

Who is it for?: Businesses and enterprises that need a robust, scalable, and legally compliant scraping solution and would rather use a managed platform than build everything themselves.

4. ScrapeGraphAI

ScrapeGraphAI takes a really interesting, AI-native approach to web scraping. Instead of writing code with fragile CSS selectors that break every time a website’s layout changes, you just describe the data you want in plain English. It uses an LLM and graph logic to figure out the page structure and find the data, making it much less likely to break.

What makes it stand out:

• You use natural language prompts. This makes creating a scraper so much simpler. You can get a working prototype in minutes just by writing a sentence.

• It has self-healing logic. Because it understands what you want instead of just following a fixed path, it’s designed to adapt when a website's layout changes. That means less time spent on maintenance.

• It works with local LLMs. You can connect it to local models via Ollama, which helps keep your costs down and your data private.

Pricing:

ScrapeGraphAI is open-source and free to use. Your only cost is for the LLM you connect it to, which can be zero if you run a model locally.

Who is it for?: Teams that want to build scrapers quickly, developers who are tired of fixing broken selectors on sites that change all the time, and anyone curious about the future of AI-driven scraping.

5. Bright Data

Bright Data is mostly known for its massive proxy network, but it also offers a whole suite of data collection tools that are a powerful alternative to Firecrawl. It's less of a single tool and more of a complete infrastructure layer for serious, large-scale data operations.

What makes it stand out:

• The Web Unlocker is amazing. This is their star feature. It's an advanced tool that automatically handles CAPTCHAs, blocks, and browser fingerprinting, letting you get into even the most difficult-to-scrape websites.

• It has ready-made Scraper APIs. They offer pre-built scrapers for popular websites that give you structured JSON data directly, saving you from having to parse all the HTML yourself.

• It has an MCP Server. This is a unique feature that lets you connect LLMs directly to their scraping services, turning your AI agent into a powerful data extractor with access to their entire infrastructure.

Pricing:

Bright Data is mostly a pay-as-you-go service. For example, their Web Scraper API starts at around $3.00 per 1,000 page loads. This can be a good deal for specific tasks, but you'll want to keep an eye on your usage to manage costs.

Who is it for?: Organizations with mission-critical data needs that require the best-in-class infrastructure for proxies, unblocking, and reliability at a massive scale.

6. Jina AI Reader

Sometimes you just need to turn a single URL into clean markdown without any fuss. Jina AI Reader does exactly that, and it does it incredibly well. It's a dead-simple API that's perfect for quick tasks, RAG prototypes, and feeding content into LLM pipelines on the fly.

What makes it stand out:

• There is zero setup. You just add "r.jina.ai/" in front of any URL to get clean, readable markdown. It doesn't get any easier than that.

• It's incredibly fast. It delivers the content almost instantly, which is great for real-time applications.

• It has a search feature. You can also use "s.jina.ai/" followed by a search query to search the web and get the top results back as clean markdown. This is fantastic for building research agents.

Pricing:

Jina AI Reader is free for basic use with a daily rate limit. You'll need an API key for higher volumes, but the free tier is generous enough for most prototypes and small projects.

Who is it for?: Developers building RAG applications, browser extensions, or anyone who needs a super fast and simple way to get LLM-ready content from a single webpage.

7. DIY with Playwright

For the most complicated scraping jobs, sometimes the best tool is the one you build yourself. Playwright is a modern, open-source browser automation library from Microsoft that gives you total control over how a browser behaves. It's the right choice when you need to scrape dynamic, JavaScript-heavy sites that require complex logins or user interactions.

What makes it stand out:

• You have total flexibility. You control every single part of the crawl, from network requests and cookies to clicking buttons and filling out forms.

• It works across all major browsers. It can automate Chromium (Chrome, Edge), Firefox, and WebKit (Safari) with a single, consistent API.

• It’s robust and reliable. Modern features like auto-waits make Playwright scripts much less flaky than older tools like Selenium. It intelligently waits for elements to be ready before trying to interact with them.

Pricing:

Playwright is free and open-source. Your only costs are your own development time and the servers needed to run your scrapers.

Who is it for?: Experienced developers and teams with unique needs that off-the-shelf tools just can't handle. It’s for anyone willing to invest the time to build and maintain a custom solution in exchange for ultimate power and control.

How to choose the right Firecrawl alternatives for you

The best tool for the job really depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. Here’s a quick guide to help you decide.

• If you’re a developer who wants full control, and you're comfortable with Python and self-hosting, Crawl4AI is probably your best bet. If you need maximum flexibility for really complex, interactive sites, taking a DIY Playwright approach is the way to go.

• If you need to prototype something fast or have a simple task, use Jina AI Reader to turn a URL into markdown right now. If you're building a scraper for a site that changes a lot and you're tired of fixing it, give ScrapeGraphAI a look.

• If you need enterprise-level scale and reliability, and you want a fully managed platform with support and compliance features, Apify and Bright Data are the industry standards.

• If you’re a support or IT leader, and your real goal is to automate customer service, you can skip the whole scraping-and-building process. eesel AI is the clear choice here. It’s a complete solution that solves the business problem, not just a developer tool that gives you data.

Go beyond scraping and get straight to automation

Firecrawl kicked open the door for AI-powered data extraction, but the world has moved on. Today, there's a whole range of powerful Firecrawl alternatives designed for different needs, budgets, and technical skills. Whether you need a free open-source library, a massive enterprise platform, or a dead-simple API, there’s a tool out there that will work for you.

But for many teams, scraping data is just the first, messy step toward a much bigger goal. If what you really want is to automate support, reduce ticket volume, and give your customers instant answers, why build everything from scratch?

Try eesel AI for free and see how you can go from scattered knowledge to a fully functional AI support agent in minutes, not months.