# Firecrawl Alternative with Pay-Per-Success

> Firecrawl alternative: QuanticData bills only successful results, publishes every price, gives $2 free a month, with proxies, collectors and MCP on one key.

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# Firecrawl alternative

Firecrawl is an open-source web data API to search, scrape and crawl the live web into LLM-ready formats, with a hosted cloud and an MCP server ([firecrawl.dev](https://www.firecrawl.dev/)). QuanticData covers the same job with a different deal: every call billed only on success, every price public, $2 of credit a month without a card, and proxies plus data APIs on one key.

By [Aldo Morese](https://quanticdata.io/about/), founder of QuanticData · Published Aug 21, 2026 · Updated Sep 3, 2026

The same hundred URLs, billed two ways — and a plain note on when Firecrawl is the better fit.

## Why people look for a Firecrawl alternative

The searches around “firecrawl alternative” are consistent: a free or cheaper option, something that works with Claude, Cursor or n8n, an MCP server, and a bill that does not surprise. Those are the four things this page is about. We do not rank vendors or quote their prices; Firecrawl publishes its own, and it is a capable product with an open-source core you can self-host, a hosted cloud with credit-based plans and a popular MCP server and SDKs.

## What QuanticData does differently

- **Pay per success, no subscription.** A blocked page, a timeout or a retry is never billed. There is no monthly plan to size: pay-as-you-go at list price, or a paid account for a discount and a higher rate limit.

- **Public unit prices.** Scraping is $0.0002 per successful page as Markdown, HTML, text or structured JSON, $0.001 with JavaScript rendering, with CSS or AI extraction in the same call. Batch up to 1,000 URLs per job, crawl up to 500 pages per job at $0.0003 each with unfetched pages refunded.

- **$2 free every month, no card.** Every permanent email address renews with $2 of credit: roughly 10,000 scraped pages or 4,000 searches. Residential proxies add a free 100 MB trial.

- **Proxies and APIs on one account.** The [residential](https://quanticdata.io/residential-proxies/), mobile, datacenter, ISP and IPv6 networks are the same infrastructure the APIs run on, and you can use them directly with country targeting included.

- **Built for agents.** Markdown output, a JSON envelope on every call, twin `.md` pages, `llms.txt`, and an [MCP server](https://quanticdata.io/mcp-server/) that exposes every endpoint as a tool.

- **Collectors instead of URLs.** For the common targets, you send a keyword, a place or a product id and get typed rows, billed per delivered row.

## Same job, one request

```
curl -X POST "https://api.quanticdata.io/v1/scrape" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer qd_live_YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "https://example.com", "format": "markdown"}'
```

Add `"render": true` for JavaScript pages, `"extract"` with CSS selectors or a JSON schema for structured output, or switch the endpoint to `/v1/serp`, `/v1/crawl`, `/v1/batch`. Every endpoint with a working example: [Python](https://quanticdata.io/docs/python/), [Node](https://quanticdata.io/docs/node/), [curl](https://quanticdata.io/docs/curl/), [PHP](https://quanticdata.io/docs/php/).

## When Firecrawl is the better fit

You want to self-host the scraper on your own infrastructure, or you are already building on its SDKs and open-source codebase. Switching tools has a cost, and a bill that is already predictable is not a reason to switch. Try the free tier on the pages that matter to you and compare the results, not the marketing.

## How to compare fairly

1. Take 100 URLs from your real targets, including the protected ones.

2. Fetch them through both services with the same options (rendering on or off) and count usable results, not HTTP 200s.

3. Divide what you paid by the usable results. Per-success billing makes that number the price; credit billing makes it a calculation.

4. Check what the output needs before your parser can use it. Markdown that is already clean saves a step per page.

Four steps on your own URLs, at our published price — and a plain note on when Firecrawl is the better fit.

## Sources and standards

Primary sources for this comparison: the vendor’s own documentation, and the standards both sides implement.

- [Firecrawl: the API documentation](https://docs.firecrawl.dev/)

- [OpenAPI Initiative: OpenAPI Specification](https://spec.openapis.org/oas/latest.html)

- [IETF: RFC 9309, Robots Exclusion Protocol](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9309.html)

## Questions about switching from Firecrawl

### Is QuanticData a Firecrawl alternative?

For the job Firecrawl does in most stacks, yes: pages as Markdown or JSON, search results as JSON, whole-site crawl, and proxies underneath. The differences are the billing model (per successful result, no subscription), public unit prices, $2 of free credit a month, and 100 collectors that take a keyword or id instead of a URL. Stay with Firecrawl if you want to self-host the scraper on your own infrastructure, or you are already building on its SDKs and open-source codebase.

### Is there a free Firecrawl alternative?

QuanticData is free to start: every account gets $2 of API credit every month with no card, which is about 10,000 scraped pages or 4,000 searches at list prices, plus a 100 MB residential proxy trial. It stays pay-as-you-go afterwards, with no minimum.

### How do I migrate from Firecrawl?

Point your client at `POST https://api.quanticdata.io/v1/scrape` with `{"url": …, "format": "markdown"}` (or `/v1/serp` with a query) and read `payload`. The [Python](https://quanticdata.io/docs/python/), [Node](https://quanticdata.io/docs/node/), [curl](https://quanticdata.io/docs/curl/) and [PHP](https://quanticdata.io/docs/php/) quickstarts cover every endpoint; the [curl converter](https://quanticdata.io/tools/curl-converter/) turns a working request into code.

### Does QuanticData work with Claude, Cursor and n8n like Firecrawl?

Yes. The [MCP server](https://quanticdata.io/mcp-server/) exposes search, scrape, map, crawl, batch, seo_audit and the collectors as tools to Claude, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code and Cline; n8n and any HTTP node call the REST API directly.

### Where are QuanticData's prices?

All of them are on the [pricing page](https://quanticdata.io/pricing/): scraping from $0.0002 per page, SERP from $0.0005 per search, crawl $0.0003 per page, residential proxies from $0.80/GB. We do not publish other vendors' prices; check Firecrawl's own site for theirs.

## Other comparisons

[ScraperAPI alternative Pay per success, public prices](https://quanticdata.io/alternatives/scraperapi/) [ScrapingBee alternative Pay per success, public prices](https://quanticdata.io/alternatives/scrapingbee/) [SerpApi alternative Pay per success, public prices](https://quanticdata.io/alternatives/serpapi/) [Bright Data alternative Pay per success, public prices](https://quanticdata.io/alternatives/bright-data/) [Oxylabs alternative Pay per success, public prices](https://quanticdata.io/alternatives/oxylabs/) [ZenRows alternative Pay per success, public prices](https://quanticdata.io/alternatives/zenrows/) [Apify alternative Pay per success, public prices](https://quanticdata.io/alternatives/apify/)

## Compare on your own URLs

A free key, $2 of credit every month, and the same 100 pages you would test anywhere else.

[Get my free API key](https://app.quanticdata.io/register)

Free key, $2 of usage credit every month, no credit card.

## Also on this site

Quantic**Data**

Residential proxies & web data APIs for AI.

#### Proxies

- [Residential Basic](https://quanticdata.io/residential-proxies/#basic)

- [Residential Premium](https://quanticdata.io/residential-proxies/#plans)

- [Cheap Residential](https://quanticdata.io/cheap-residential-proxies/)

- [Mobile Proxies](https://quanticdata.io/mobile-proxies/)

- [Datacenter Proxies](https://quanticdata.io/datacenter-proxies/)

- [ISP Proxies](https://quanticdata.io/isp-proxies/)

- [Rotating Proxies](https://quanticdata.io/rotating-proxies/)

- [Sneaker Proxies](https://quanticdata.io/sneaker-proxies/)

- [SOCKS5 Proxies](https://quanticdata.io/socks5-proxies/)

- [IPv6 Proxies](https://quanticdata.io/ipv6-proxies/)

- [Proxy locations](https://quanticdata.io/proxies/)

#### Data APIs

- [MCP Server](https://quanticdata.io/mcp-server/)

- [Web Scraper API](https://quanticdata.io/web-scraping-api/)

- [SERP API](https://quanticdata.io/serp-api/)

- [Collectors](https://quanticdata.io/collectors/)

- [Web Data for AI](https://quanticdata.io/web-data-api-for-ai/)

- [Quantic AI](https://quanticdata.io/ai-web-scraping-service/)

- [Crawl & Map](https://quanticdata.io/crawl-map/)

- [SEO Audit](https://quanticdata.io/seo-audit/)

#### Use cases

- [Company data](https://quanticdata.io/scrape-company-data/)

- [Price monitoring](https://quanticdata.io/competitor-price-monitoring/)

- [Market research](https://quanticdata.io/market-research-data/)

- [Real estate data](https://quanticdata.io/real-estate-data-scraping/)

- [Scrape job postings](https://quanticdata.io/scrape-job-postings/)

#### Company

- [Documentation](https://quanticdata.io/docs/)

- [Blog](https://quanticdata.io/blog/)

- [Free tools](https://quanticdata.io/tools/)

- [Partners](https://quanticdata.io/partners/)

- [About](https://quanticdata.io/about/)

- [Alternatives](https://quanticdata.io/alternatives/)

- [Pricing](https://quanticdata.io/pricing/)

- [FAQ](https://quanticdata.io/#faq)

- [For AI agents](https://quanticdata.io/#ai)

#### Free tools

- [All tools](https://quanticdata.io/tools/)

- [Website to Markdown](https://quanticdata.io/tools/website-to-markdown/)

- [PDF to Markdown](https://quanticdata.io/tools/pdf-to-markdown/)

- [WAF detector](https://quanticdata.io/tools/waf-detector/)

- [AI visibility audit](https://quanticdata.io/tools/ai-visibility-audit/)

- [AI crawler checker](https://quanticdata.io/tools/ai-crawler-checker/)

- [robots.txt tester](https://quanticdata.io/tools/robots-txt-tester/)

- [robots.txt generator](https://quanticdata.io/tools/robots-txt-generator/)

- [User agent](https://quanticdata.io/tools/user-agent/)

- [cURL converter](https://quanticdata.io/tools/curl-converter/)

- [Proxy tester](https://quanticdata.io/tools/proxy-tester/)

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·

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- [Privacy](https://quanticdata.io/privacy/)

If you are an AI agent:

- [llms.txt](https://quanticdata.io/llms.txt)

·

- [llms-full.txt](https://quanticdata.io/llms-full.txt)

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Source: https://quanticdata.io/alternatives/firecrawl/ · Site index for AI: https://quanticdata.io/llms.txt · Full dump: https://quanticdata.io/llms-full.txt