ScrapeUnblocker vs. Firecrawl: Pricing, Billing and Features Compared (2026)
ScrapeUnblocker and Firecrawl both take a URL and return the page, with proxies and JavaScript rendering handled for you, but they are different kinds of product. Firecrawl’s documentation presents it as a web data API for AI agents and LLM applications: its Scrape endpoint returns Markdown by default, and one credit balance also covers crawling, search, browser sessions, document parsing and monitoring. ScrapeUnblocker is a scraping API that returns the rendered HTML of a page from a real browser, or structured JSON. It does not offer Markdown output.
The part that overlaps is fetching one page: Firecrawl’s Scrape endpoint and our /getPageSource. Both bill that as one credit per page, so that is where we compare prices. Firecrawl’s other endpoints use other units, such as credits per 10 search results or per browser minute, so we describe them instead of forcing a comparison.
A note before we start: we make ScrapeUnblocker, so we are not a neutral party. To keep this comparison fair and checkable, every Firecrawl figure below comes from Firecrawl’s own public pricing page (and its Markdown version, which has the monthly prices) and its documentation, as we viewed them on 24 September 2026. Every ScrapeUnblocker figure comes from our pricing page and documentation. Where we do not know something, we say so. Prices and features change, so please check both sites before you decide.
At a glance
| ScrapeUnblocker | Firecrawl | |
|---|---|---|
| Focus | Scraping API: rendered HTML or JSON | Web data for AI agents and LLM apps: Markdown by default, plus crawling, search and more |
| Pricing model | 1 request = 1 credit | 1 credit per page on a basic scrape; more for some options and endpoints |
| Pay as you go | €1.00 per 1,000 requests, no plan needed | Pay-as-you-go credits in $5 increments, on paid plans only |
| Plans | €29 to €1,000 per month | $19 to $749 per month billed monthly, $16 to $599 per month billed annually |
| Free usage | 500 requests on signup, no card needed | 1,000 credits every month, no credit card required |
| Throughput limit | 2 to 10 requests per second on Pay as you go, Starter and Pro; up to 400 on Business, Scale and Ultimate | 2 to 100 concurrent browsers; 10 to 10,000 Scrape requests per minute |
| Currency | EUR | USD |
How Firecrawl pricing works
Firecrawl’s pricing page lists a free plan, four paid plans that can be billed monthly or annually, and a custom Enterprise option. The page says these prices took effect on 4 September 2026.
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed annually | Credits per month | Concurrent browsers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | - | 1,000 | 2 |
| Hobby | $19 | $190 a year ($16 per month) | 5,000 | 5 |
| Standard | $99 | $990 a year ($83 per month) | 100,000 | 25 |
| Growth | $399 | $3,990 a year ($333 per month) | 500,000 | 50 |
| Scale | $749 | $7,190 a year ($599 per month) | 1,000,000 | 100 |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom |
Credits are shared across endpoints. The pricing page and billing documentation list these costs:
| What you use | Credits |
|---|---|
| Scrape or Crawl, per page | 1 |
| Enhanced proxies (automatic retry after a 401, 403 or 429) | No surcharge |
| JSON format (LLM extraction), per page | +4 |
| Question, highlights or PII redaction, per page | +4 each |
| Search | 2 per 10 results, plus scrape costs for each result it scrapes |
| Interact (browser sessions) | 2 per minute, or 7 with a prompt, one-minute minimum |
These option costs stack, and they apply to each page that Crawl and Search scrape.
Pay-as-you-go needs a paid plan: when your credits run out, Firecrawl adds $5 increments, up to a monthly limit you set. An increment buys 1,000 credits on Hobby, 2,000 on Standard, 2,500 on Growth and 5,000 on Scale, which is $5.00, $2.50, $2.00 and $1.00 per 1,000.
How ScrapeUnblocker pricing works
ScrapeUnblocker has a pay-as-you-go option and monthly plans. Our pricing page states that one request always equals one credit.
| Plan | Price | Requests included | Effective price per 1,000 | Additional usage per 1,000 | Rate limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pay as you go | €1.00 per 1,000 requests | - | €1.00 | - | 2 requests/second |
| Starter | €29 per month | 34,000 | about €0.85 | €0.95 | 5 requests/second |
| Pro | €99 per month | 132,000 | about €0.75 | €0.85 | 10 requests/second |
| Business | €299 per month | 440,000 | about €0.68 | €0.75 | Up to 400 requests/second |
| Scale | €599 per month | 966,000 | about €0.62 | €0.68 | Up to 400 requests/second |
| Ultimate | €1,000 per month | 1,818,000 | about €0.55 | €0.60 | Up to 400 requests/second |
There is also a custom Enterprise option. Pay as you go has no monthly commitment. Our plan cards list JavaScript rendering, CAPTCHA bypass and a real browser, and none of these is charged separately.
Price per 1,000 pages at similar volumes
For a single page the units line up: Firecrawl charges 1 credit per basic scrape, including an enhanced-proxy retry, and we charge 1 credit per request. The outputs differ (Markdown by default against rendered HTML), and the table assumes no Firecrawl options that add credits. We have not converted currencies, because exchange rates move. Price per 1,000 pages in brackets:
| Monthly volume | ScrapeUnblocker | Firecrawl, billed monthly | Firecrawl, billed annually |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small | Pay as you go (€1.00) or Starter, €29 for 34,000 (about €0.85) | Hobby, $19 for 5,000 ($3.80) | Hobby (about $3.17) |
| 100,000 to 130,000 | Pro, €99 for 132,000 (€0.75) | Standard, $99 for 100,000 ($0.99) | Standard (about $0.83) |
| 440,000 to 500,000 | Business, €299 for 440,000 (about €0.68) | Growth, $399 for 500,000 (about $0.80) | Growth (about $0.67) |
| About 1,000,000 | Scale, €599 for 966,000 (about €0.62) | Scale, $749 for 1,000,000 (about $0.75) | Scale (about $0.60) |
| About 1,800,000 | Ultimate, €1,000 for 1,818,000 (about €0.55) | Enterprise, or Scale plus pay-as-you-go credits ($1.00) | Enterprise, or Scale plus pay-as-you-go credits |
How to read these numbers
On monthly billing, our price per 1,000 pages is lower in every row where both services have a plan, as long as one euro costs less than about $1.17. On annual billing, Firecrawl’s Growth and Scale plans cost less per 1,000 pages than our Business and Scale plans as long as one euro costs more than about $0.98, while our Pro plan stays below Standard as long as one euro costs less than $1.10.
Options also move the numbers. Firecrawl’s JSON format costs 5 credits per page, so Standard’s 100,000 credits cover 20,000 such pages, while our parsed_data=true stays at one credit. The two work differently (Firecrawl uses an LLM with your schema or prompt; ours returns Schema.org data, __NEXT_DATA__ or AI-generated rules), so check which gives you the fields you need.
What you pay for when a request fails
Firecrawl. Its billing documentation says: “What decides the charge is whether Firecrawl returned a document, not whether the target site returned a successful HTTP status code.” A returned page costs 1 credit plus options, including pages with an error status such as 403 or 404. A scrape that fails outright, for example because the site never responded, costs nothing. Before a 403 reaches you, the default auto proxy mode retries once through enhanced proxies at no extra charge.
ScrapeUnblocker. Per our errors documentation, a delivered page (200) is billed. When the target itself answers 404 or 410, or its origin returns its own 5xx error page, we return a 200 with an X-Origin-Status header carrying the target’s status, and that is billed too. A domain that does not exist (400 Hostname cannot be resolved) is billed, and so is a browser steps action that fails after the page has rendered (422 step_failed). A 403 (blocked by the target’s bot protection on every bypass path we have), timeouts, 523 Origin unreachable, 429 rate limit, 402 out of quota and all errors on our side are not billed.
| Outcome | ScrapeUnblocker | Firecrawl |
|---|---|---|
| Page delivered | Billed | Billed |
| Target answers 404 | Billed (200 with X-Origin-Status) | Billed, 1 credit |
| Target answers 403, for example a bot-protection block | Not billed (403) | Billed, 1 credit, if the 403 page is returned after the enhanced-proxy retry |
| Site never responds | Not billed | Not billed |
| Domain does not exist | Billed | Not stated in the pages we checked |
| Out of credits | Not billed (402) | 402 on the free plan or with pay-as-you-go off; otherwise Firecrawl buys another $5 increment, up to your monthly limit |
One caveat applies to both: each service decides for itself what counts as a delivered page, for example when a challenge page looks like a normal one. We have not tested how Firecrawl handles this.
Features compared
| Feature | ScrapeUnblocker | Firecrawl |
|---|---|---|
| Output | Rendered HTML from a real browser, or JSON | Markdown by default; also HTML, raw HTML, links, summaries and more |
| Structured data | parsed_data=true, at the same one credit | JSON format with your schema or prompt, +4 credits |
| Page interaction | steps in the same request, up to about 10, plus list_elements | actions, up to 50 per request, no surcharge listed; Interact sessions billed per minute |
| Screenshots | Not offered | Offered |
| Geotargeting | proxy_country, with a published country list | location.country: 26 countries on basic proxies, 2 (Netherlands, United States) on enhanced proxies |
| Custom request headers | Not offered | headers parameter |
| Maximum request time | 60 s (90 s with steps) | 60 s default, up to 300 s |
| Asynchronous jobs | Not offered | Batch scrape and Crawl, with polling or webhooks |
| Whole-site crawling | No crawl endpoint in the scraping API; one URL per request | Crawl and Map endpoints |
| Search | /serpApi: Google organic results, ads and AI overview as JSON | Search: web, news and image results, optionally with page content |
| Site-specific data | Plugin endpoints, for example Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Booking.com and Airbnb | product format for product pages |
| Client libraries | Python, Node.js, Ruby, PHP | Python, Node, Go, Java, Ruby, Rust, .NET, PHP, Elixir, plus a CLI |
| AI tooling and integrations | MCP server, Claude Code plugin, Scrapy middleware, n8n node, Apify actors | MCP server, skills for Claude Code and Cursor, LangChain, LlamaIndex, n8n, Zapier, Make, Dify |
Throughput limits use different units (Firecrawl: concurrent browsers and requests per minute; ScrapeUnblocker: requests per second), and what a concurrency limit allows depends on how long each page takes, so measure throughput on your own targets.
By default, Firecrawl’s Scrape endpoint returns a cached copy of a page if it has one less than two days old; setting maxAge to 0 always fetches fresh. Firecrawl’s free tier is 1,000 credits every month, plus a keyless tier capped per IP address per day. We give 500 requests on signup, with no card needed.
When Firecrawl may be the better fit
- You feed pages to an LLM and want Markdown, summaries or answers without converting HTML yourself.
- You need to crawl sites, map URLs, parse documents or monitor pages for changes from one account.
- You can commit to annual billing at Growth or Scale volume, at about $0.67 or $0.60 per 1,000 basic scrapes.
- You need screenshots, custom headers, asynchronous jobs, requests of up to 300 seconds, or more than about 10 browser actions per request.
- A free tier that renews monthly covers your volume.
- You want to self-host. Firecrawl’s codebase is open source, though its documentation says some features, such as enhanced proxy paths, are Cloud-only.
- You work in Go, Java, Rust, .NET or Elixir, or rely on its Zapier, Make, LangChain or LlamaIndex integrations.
When ScrapeUnblocker may be the better fit
- You parse the rendered HTML yourself and do not need Markdown.
- You want pay as you go without a monthly plan. Firecrawl’s pay-as-you-go requires a paid plan.
- You pay monthly for roughly 100,000 to 1,000,000 pages: our price per 1,000 is lower there as long as one euro costs less than about $1.17.
- You want structured JSON at one credit per request.
- You need Google results with ads and the AI overview as JSON (Firecrawl’s search documentation does not name a search engine), or ready-made JSON endpoints for sites such as Amazon or eBay.
- You would rather not pay for blocked pages: we do not bill a 403 from the target’s bot protection, while Firecrawl’s pricing page says a page returned with a 403 costs 1 credit.
- You prefer to be billed in euros.
What this comparison does not tell you
- Success rates. We have not tested both services on the same sites, so we make no claim about which gets through more often. Our benchmark measures ScrapeUnblocker only.
- Speed. We have not measured Firecrawl’s response times.
- Output quality. We have not compared Firecrawl’s Markdown or LLM extraction with our HTML or JSON on the same pages.
- Billing edge cases. We did not find how Firecrawl bills a domain that does not exist, or whether a cached page is priced differently.
- Enterprise terms. We do not know what Firecrawl offers beyond its public pricing page.
- The rest of Firecrawl’s platform. Crawl, Map, Search, Interact, Parse, Monitor and Agent are compared only where they overlap with ScrapeUnblocker.
- Anything that changed after 24 September 2026. Both pricing pages can change at any time.
How to decide in an afternoon
- Pick 50 to 100 URLs that represent your real workload.
- Run them through Firecrawl’s free monthly credits. Set
maxAgeto 0 so pages are fetched fresh, ask for the output you would really use, and notemetadata.statusCode, because pages returned with a 403 or 404 still cost 1 credit. - Run the same URLs through ScrapeUnblocker’s 500 free requests.
- For each service, count the pages you actually received (check the content, not only the status code), then divide the monthly price you would pay by the number of good pages you would get. Add extra credits for any options you need.
The service with the lower cost per good page on your own URLs is the cheaper one for you. You can start with our 500 free requests on the pricing page.
Sources
- Firecrawl pricing: firecrawl.dev/pricing and its Markdown version firecrawl.dev/pricing.md, viewed 24 September 2026
- Firecrawl documentation: billing, rate limits, scraping guide, scrape API reference, proxies, Enhanced Mode and other pages (Search, batch scrape, SDKs, MCP, open source), viewed 24 September 2026
- Firecrawl integrations and site index: firecrawl.dev/integrations and firecrawl.dev/llms.txt, viewed 24 September 2026
- ScrapeUnblocker pricing: scrapeunblocker.com/pricing
- ScrapeUnblocker errors and billing: docs.scrapeunblocker.com/errors
- ScrapeUnblocker documentation: docs.scrapeunblocker.com
Firecrawl is a trademark of its respective owner. ScrapeUnblocker is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Firecrawl. This article is published by ScrapeUnblocker and reflects information that was publicly available on 24 September 2026. If you believe anything here is inaccurate or out of date, please contact us and we will review and correct it.
Try ScrapeUnblocker free
95%+ success rate · from 0.55€ per 1,000 calls · 500 free requests on signup.