Firecrawl alternatives: ask for the data and get finished rows
SpecStream is the best alternative to Firecrawl for teams that want extracted data without writing and fixing scrapers. Firecrawl turns the pages you point it at into Markdown or JSON and bills credits per page. SpecStream is the live web data engine for teams and agents: you ask for the data in plain words, and it finds every match on the live web, extracts and enriches it into structured rows, and keeps them up to date. You see the most a run can cost before it starts, and you pay only for the rows delivered.
New accounts get $10 of work for their first 30 days, no card.
SpecStream and Firecrawl side by side
| SpecStream | Firecrawl | |
|---|---|---|
| What you send | The data you want in plain words, with the conditions every row must meet | A URL or a site for Scrape, Crawl and Map, a search query, or a prompt for Agent |
| What you get back | Structured rows, one record per company, place or filing, with facts from many sites joined. Source URL and read time on every value | Pages as Markdown, HTML, screenshots or JSON. Agent returns roughly 150 to 200 rows a run, kept for 24 hours |
| Data already held | Public databases read every morning at specstream.ai/data: every company that filed a Form D since 2023 with its filing history, nearly 2 million US nonprofits, every US bank failure since 1934, federal rules, open federal contracts and grants, and local businesses. Signals such as funding rounds, new executives and layoffs at specstream.ai/signals. Ask for your own cut of any of them | Its own Government & Legal Index of 30 million US government pages (launched Oct 22, 2026), Research and Developer indexes, and 431 outside data providers through Alexandria. Government search is free; a result's full text costs scrape credits |
| A list you already have | Import a CSV, Excel file, Google Sheet or Airtable base of up to 20,000 rows. SpecStream fills in or checks each row and matches it to one identity, with any namesakes shown alongside their evidence. Import is free. A row that matches pays its rate, and a row that does not costs 5¢ | Batch Scrape takes a list of URLs. Its lead enrichment page has you scrape each prospect's domain, then look people up through Apollo, FullEnrich or Data Legion in Alexandria |
| The unit you pay for | A delivered row: 5¢, 15¢ or $1 by how much the row needs, plus 5¢ for an email and 15¢ for a phone. The same rate on every plan | A credit: 1 per page, 4 more per page for JSON, 2 per 10 search results. Paid plans from $19 a month for 5,000 credits to $749 a month for 1,000,000 |
| What failed or empty work costs | Nothing. A row left out, a retry and a run that finds nothing are not charged | A 403 or 404 page costs 1 credit. Every page that returns is billed, whether or not it holds the data you need |
| The cost cap before a run | The most the run can cost, quoted before it starts. Nothing runs until you approve it, and there are no automatic overages | Agent stops at maxCredits, 2,500 credits by default. Scrape, Crawl and Search bill per page or per 10 results |
| Reruns and change labels | Hourly to yearly. Each row comes back labeled changed, unchanged or no longer matching. A changed or new row costs half its rate, an unchanged row 1¢ | Monitor and Change Tracking, 1 credit per page per check, or 7 with deterministic extraction |
| MCP and API | MCP server, REST API, Python and TypeScript SDKs, a CLI and A2A. An agent can buy one request with no account, by card or in USDC | MCP server, API and SDKs |
| Where the data goes | Google Sheets, Excel, Airtable, Notion, monday.com, HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Attio, Slack, Teams, Zapier, Make, n8n and signed webhooks | API responses and webhooks. Its lead enrichment page describes filling Salesforce and HubSpot fields |
Why Firecrawl buyers move to SpecStream
You describe the data, and SpecStream finds the pages
Firecrawl's Scrape, Crawl and Map start from the URLs you send, and your code turns the pages into records. On SpecStream the request is the whole job. It can be companies, places, filings, tenders or products: "founder-owned machine shops in Ohio whose own site states ISO 9001, with the owner and a phone", or "open school HVAC tenders in Texas, with the agency and due date". SpecStream reads the request back as parts you can edit, the conditions every row must meet and the facts to bring back, before anything runs. You write no scrapers, and you have none to fix when a site changes.
You pay for rows, and dead ends cost nothing
Firecrawl bills each page it returns, including the ones that never become a row. SpecStream bills the rows that meet your request: 5¢ for a row with up to 5 facts, 15¢ for up to 15 facts and one set of related records, and $1 for a deep row with no limit. A company left out costs nothing, a retry costs nothing, and a run that finds nothing costs nothing.
The price is set before the run
Every request gets a quote of the most it can cost, good for 30 minutes. Nothing runs until you approve it, the charge never goes past that amount, and whatever the run does not use goes back to your balance. Reading and pricing a request cost nothing.
A row that did not change costs 1¢ to recheck
Save the request and it reruns hourly to yearly. Each row comes back labeled changed, unchanged or no longer matching, and new matches arrive in Slack, email, a sheet, a CRM or a signed webhook. A changed or new row costs half its rate (3¢, 8¢ or 50¢) and an unchanged row costs 1¢, so rechecking 1,000 rows that did not change costs $10. Rows you already own are never charged again.
The rows land in your tools and your agent
Rows go to Sheets, Excel, Airtable, Notion, monday.com, HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Attio, Slack, Teams, Zapier, Make or n8n with no code. Agents connect to https://api.specstream.ai/mcp with OAuth or an API key, connecting is free on every plan, and people and agents spend from one balance.
Other Firecrawl alternatives
Exa
A search API. Search costs $4 (lite) or $7 (auto) per 1,000 requests, and Exa Agent costs $0.012 to $1.00 a request at a fixed effort level. Its pricing page does not say what a failed or empty Agent run costs. SpecStream quotes the whole job before it runs and bills only the rows delivered.
Apify
A platform for cloud programs called Actors, with more than 108,000 in its Store. Each Actor's author sets its price, per result, per event or in compute units at $0.13 to $0.20. Plans run from $0 to $999 a month, and unused credits do not roll over. SpecStream has one rate card for every request, the same on every plan, and a top-up never expires.
Bright Data
Proxy networks, a Web Unlocker, SERP and Web Scraper APIs and a datasets marketplace. The Web Scraper API costs $1.50 per 1,000 records pay as you go, and a record is one extracted item, such as one LinkedIn profile. Datasets have a $250 minimum order. A SpecStream row joins the facts from many sites into one record that meets every condition you wrote.
How to switch from Firecrawl
Write the data you want in plain words, in place of the URLs and endpoints you call today. Sign up and you get $10 of work for your first 30 days, no card. At 5¢ a row, that is up to 200 rows.
Or send the request from code. This call spends nothing: the 402 reply shows how SpecStream read the request, the columns and the most it can cost.
curl -i https://api.specstream.ai/v1/agent/lists \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"request": "Founder-owned machine shops in Ohio whose own site states ISO 9001, with the owner and a phone", "count": 25}'Approve that maximum by card through Stripe's Link agent wallet, or in USDC, and you pay only for the rows found. On an account, your agent uses the MCP server and your team uses the workspace, from the same balance.
Frequently asked questions
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What is the best Firecrawl alternative?
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Do I need to write code to use SpecStream?
Does SpecStream have an MCP server?
https://api.specstream.ai/mcp over Streamable HTTP, with OAuth or an API key. Your agent sends the data it needs in plain words, sees the most the run can cost, and reads rows that meet every condition, inside the limits you set on its key.Sources
SpecStream wrote this page. Each rival figure comes from that company's own page.
- SpecStream pricingspecstream.ai/pricing, read Nov 4, 2026
- SpecStream for agentsspecstream.ai/agents.md, read Nov 4, 2026
- Firecrawl pricingfirecrawl.dev/pricing, read Nov 4, 2026
- Firecrawl Agentdocs.firecrawl.dev/features/agent.md, read Nov 4, 2026
- Firecrawl Scrapedocs.firecrawl.dev/features/scrape, read Nov 4, 2026
- Firecrawl introductiondocs.firecrawl.dev/introduction, read Nov 4, 2026
- Firecrawl MCP serverdocs.firecrawl.dev/mcp-server.md, read Nov 4, 2026
- Firecrawl docs indexdocs.firecrawl.dev/llms.txt, read Nov 4, 2026
- Firecrawl lead enrichmentfirecrawl.dev/use-cases/lead-enrichment, read Nov 4, 2026
- Exa pricingexa.ai/docs/admin/pricing.md, read Nov 4, 2026
- Apify pricingapify.com/pricing, read Nov 4, 2026
- Apify Storeapify.com/store, read Nov 4, 2026
- Bright Data pricingbrightdata.com/pricing, read Nov 4, 2026
- Bright Data Web Scraper API pricingbrightdata.com/pricing/web-scraper, read Nov 4, 2026
- Bright Data datasetsbrightdata.com/products/datasets, read Nov 4, 2026
- SpecStream dataspecstream.ai/data, read Nov 4, 2026
- SpecStream signalsspecstream.ai/signals, read Nov 4, 2026
- Firecrawl Government & Legal Indexfirecrawl.dev/blog/government-legal-index, read Nov 4, 2026
- Firecrawl Alexandriafirecrawl.dev/alexandria, read Nov 4, 2026
- Firecrawl Batch Scrapedocs.firecrawl.dev/api-reference/endpoint/batch-scrape.md, read Nov 4, 2026