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# Crawl4AI vs Parallel in 2026: one key answers both calls

Compared on Nov 12, 2026. The page: https://specstream.ai/compare/crawl4ai-vs-parallel

Crawl4AI is an Apache 2.0 crawler you host for free, or a hosted API from $10 a month at 0.1 to 2 credits a page. Parallel sells search at $1 to $5 per 1,000 requests and Extract at $1 per 1,000 URLs.

SpecStream, the live web data engine, answers both calls on one key: a Crawl4AI server's `/crawl` and `/md` at `https://api.specstream.ai/crawl4ai`, and Parallel's search at `https://api.specstream.ai/parallel`. Pages cost $0.80 per 1,000, searches $1 per 1,000, with no server to run.

[Get an API key](https://specstream.ai/signup?src=alternatives-crawl4ai-vs-parallel&utm_source=alternatives-md&utm_campaign=crawl4ai-vs-parallel&returnTo=%2Fworkspace%2Fagents%3Ftab%3Dkeys) New accounts get $10 of credit, no card. It covers 12,500 pages or 10,000 searches.

## SpecStream, Crawl4AI and Parallel side by side

| | SpecStream | Crawl4AI | Parallel |
|---|---|---|---|
| The call your code sends | Both, on one key. A Crawl4AI server's `POST /crawl`, `/crawl/stream` and `/md` answer at `https://api.specstream.ai/crawl4ai` with the key as the Bearer token, and Parallel's `POST /v1/search` at `https://api.specstream.ai/parallel` with the key in `x-api-key` | `POST http://localhost:11235/crawl` and `/md` on your own server, with its API token as the Bearer token. The hosted API answers at `https://api.crawl4ai.com` | `POST /v1/search` with `search_queries` and a `mode`, and `POST /v1/extract` for the text of a page |
| Finding the pages | $1 per 1,000 searches of up to 10 results on `/parallel/v1/search`, excerpts included, and $5 in `advanced` mode. Up to 100 results a call: each started block of 10 more adds $0.0012, so 100 results cost $0.0118 | The library reads the URLs you give it. Hosted: a search costs 1 credit, $0.001 | $1 per 1,000 requests on `turbo` and `fast`, $5 on `basic` and `advanced`, 10 results included. Each result beyond 10 adds $1 per 1,000, and public modes cap results at 20 |
| Price of a page | $0.80 per 1,000 pages, $0.0008 a page, the same whether the page needs a plain read, a real browser or a harder route. A page with no text is not charged | Self hosted: free, on your own hosting. Hosted: 1 credit is $0.001, and a plain page costs 0.1 credit, a real browser page 0.5 and a hard site 2 | Extract: $1 per 1,000 URLs |
| How you pay | From a balance, with no monthly plan. Credit you buy never expires, and a key's `spend_cap_cents` is the most it can spend | Hosted plans: Free with 1,000 credits a month, Starter $10 for 10,000, Builder $99 for 125,000, Scale $499 for 750,000. The month's credits do not carry over | Pay as you go: $5 free monthly with a card on file, plus up to $80 at signup |
| Who runs the crawler | SpecStream runs the readers, including a real browser and the site's feed or newest archive capture when a page refuses a plain read | You run the container, its browser and its memory, or you pay for the hosted API | Parallel, as a hosted API. Its own comparison says it has no self hosted option |
| What is kept | You choose per key: with `zero_retention`, a call keeps no request text and no answer after the reply | Self hosted: the pages stay on your servers | Under its standard Customer Terms, Parallel may use inputs and outputs, not linked to a person, to train its models. Enterprise plans with zero data retention exclude that |
| Rate limits | No monthly cap and no limit per key. A busy call answers `429` with `Retry-After` and charges nothing | Hosted: 10 requests a minute and 2 at a time on Free, up to 1,500 a minute and 50 at a time on Scale. A call over the limit gets a `429` | 600 requests a minute for Search and Extract |
| Free to start | $10 of credit, no card: 12,500 pages or 10,000 searches | The library is free under Apache 2.0. Hosted: a free key with 1,000 credits a month, no card | $5 free monthly with a card on file, plus up to $80 at signup |
| Published accuracy | 97.9 F-score on all 1,000 official SimpleQA Verified questions (978 correct). 64.0 item F1 and 43.4 row F1 on all 200 official WideSearch tasks. Extract API 0.908 F1 on WCXB. Method at [specstream.ai/benchmarks](https://specstream.ai/benchmarks?utm_source=alternatives&utm_campaign=crawl4ai-vs-parallel) | No accuracy score on its pricing page | No accuracy score on its pricing page |
| Every match as structured rows | Deep Search: a request in plain words returns every match on the live web as rows at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row, with a source URL on every value. The most a run can cost is quoted before it starts | Pages. Your code finds the URLs and joins the facts into records | FindAll: $0.25 a run plus $0.03 a match on `base`, up to $10.00 a run plus $1.00 a match on `pro` |
| Reruns | Save a request and it reruns hourly to yearly, with each row labeled changed, unchanged or no longer matching | Your code schedules the crawl and compares the pages | Monitor: $3 per 1,000 checks on `lite` and $10 on `base` |

## Why teams choosing between Crawl4AI and Parallel use SpecStream

### Keep both calls and change two addresses

A Crawl4AI agent still needs a search API to find its URLs, and a Parallel agent pays per URL for the page text. On SpecStream the same key does both. Each call keeps its path, its body and its parser; the address and the key change.

```
# Crawl4AI server, before and after
curl -X POST http://localhost:11235/crawl \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CRAWL4AI_API_TOKEN" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"urls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping"]}'
curl -X POST https://api.specstream.ai/crawl4ai/crawl \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPECSTREAM_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"urls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping"]}'

# Parallel search, before and after
curl -X POST https://api.parallel.ai/v1/search \
  -H "x-api-key: $PARALLEL_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"search_queries": ["open source web crawlers for LLMs"], "mode": "fast"}'
curl -X POST https://api.specstream.ai/parallel/v1/search \
  -H "x-api-key: $SPECSTREAM_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"search_queries": ["open source web crawlers for LLMs"], "mode": "fast"}'
```

Every parameter is in the [Crawl4AI migration guide](https://specstream.ai/migrate/crawl4ai?utm_source=alternatives&utm_campaign=crawl4ai-vs-parallel) and the [Parallel migration guide](https://specstream.ai/migrate/parallel?utm_source=alternatives&utm_campaign=crawl4ai-vs-parallel).

### Run the test yourself in one minute

This finds pages with one search, reads three pages through the Crawl4AI route and lists what each call cost. It spends about $0.0034 of the $10 a new account gets.

```
# 1. Find pages: the Parallel call
time curl -s -X POST https://api.specstream.ai/parallel/v1/search \
  -H "x-api-key: $SPECSTREAM_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"search_queries": ["open source web crawlers for LLMs"], "mode": "fast"}' \
  | jq '.results[] | {url, title}'

# 2. Read pages: the Crawl4AI call
time curl -s -X POST https://api.specstream.ai/crawl4ai/crawl \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPECSTREAM_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"urls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping", "https://www.python.org/about/", "https://docs.crawl4ai.com/"]}' \
  | jq '.results[] | {url, status_code, chars: (.markdown.raw_markdown | length)}'

# 3. What each call cost
curl -s "https://api.specstream.ai/v1/account/requests" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPECSTREAM_API_KEY" | jq .
```

The request log lists every call with its `endpoint`, `status`, `latency_ms` and `price_usd`, charged or not.

### One price a page, whatever the page needs

Crawl4AI's hosted API charges by what a page takes: 0.1 credit for a plain page, 0.5 in a real browser and 2 for a hard site, from a month's credits that do not carry over. Parallel charges $1 per 1,000 URLs for Extract on top of its search. On SpecStream every page with text costs $0.0008, a page with no text is not charged, and a search of up to 10 results costs $0.001, from a balance that never expires.

### What each path reads and returns

On `/crawl4ai`, `/crawl` takes 1 to 100 `urls` a call and returns `results[]` with `url`, `html`, `markdown.raw_markdown`, `links`, `metadata` and `status_code`; each page answers on its own, so one missing page leaves the rest. `cleaned_html`, `fit_markdown`, `media`, `screenshot` and `pdf` are not returned, and errors keep Crawl4AI's `{"detail": ...}` body.

On `/parallel/v1/search`, `search_queries`, `mode`, `advanced_settings.max_results` up to 100, `source_policy` with `include_domains`, `exclude_domains` and `after_date`, the excerpt settings and `session_id` work as on Parallel. The reply has `search_id`, `session_id` and `results[]` with `url`, `title`, `publish_date` and `excerpts`. `warnings` and `usage` are not returned.

### Scored on the official benchmarks

The Search API scores a 97.9 F-score on all 1,000 official SimpleQA Verified questions, 978 of them correct, and 64.0 item F1 and 43.4 row F1 on all 200 official WideSearch tasks. The Extract API behind the Crawl4AI route scores 0.908 F1 on WCXB. Every score and its method is on the [benchmarks](https://specstream.ai/benchmarks?utm_source=alternatives&utm_campaign=crawl4ai-vs-parallel) page.

A search on `/parallel/v1/search` runs the fast search unless it asks for `advanced`. On November 9, 2026 production took 1 to 20 fast searches a second and answered 718 of 720, with a median of 0.82 s at 1 a second and 1.07 s at 20 a second.

### You decide what is kept, on each key

Create a key with `zero_retention` and a call made with it keeps no request text and no answer after the reply. `spend_cap_cents` is the most the key can spend.

```
curl -X POST https://api.specstream.ai/v1/account/keys \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPECSTREAM_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name": "production", "scopes": ["account:read", "finds:spend"], "spend_cap_cents": 500000, "zero_retention": true}'
```

### Search, pages, crawls and rows on the same key

The same key reads up to 20 pages a call with the [Extract API](https://specstream.ai/extract-api?utm_source=alternatives&utm_campaign=crawl4ai-vs-parallel) at $0.80 per 1,000 pages, maps and crawls sites with `POST /v1/map` and `POST /v1/crawl`, searches the live web with `GET /v1/web-search`, and runs [Deep Search](https://specstream.ai/deep-search?utm_source=alternatives&utm_campaign=crawl4ai-vs-parallel), which returns every match for a request in plain words as structured rows at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row.

## Other crawlers and search APIs teams price

### SpecStream

The live web data engine for teams and agents. Pages and crawls at $0.80 per 1,000 pages through its own API or the Crawl4AI, Firecrawl, Spider and Jina routes, search from $1 per 1,000 through its own API or the Parallel, Exa, Tavily and Brave routes, and every match as structured rows at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row.

### Firecrawl

A hosted crawler sold in monthly credit plans, Hobby at $19 a month for 5,000 credits, with Scrape and Crawl at 1 credit a page. SpecStream answers Firecrawl's calls at `https://api.specstream.ai/firecrawl` for $0.0008 a page. [Firecrawl vs Crawl4AI](https://specstream.ai/compare/firecrawl-vs-crawl4ai?utm_source=alternatives&utm_campaign=crawl4ai-vs-parallel).

### Tavily

Search for agents sold by credit: a basic search is 1 credit at $0.008 a credit pay as you go, with 1,000 free credits every month. SpecStream answers Tavily's `POST /search` at `https://api.specstream.ai/tavily`, in Tavily's JSON, at $0.001 a search.

### Spider

A crawling API paid as you go from $1 per GB. SpecStream answers Spider's scrape and search at `https://api.specstream.ai/spider`, each page with text at $0.0008.

## How to move Crawl4AI and Parallel calls to SpecStream

1. Create a key under Agents & API in the workspace, with a spending limit. A new account gets $10 of credit, no card, which covers 12,500 pages or 10,000 searches.

2. Point the Crawl4AI calls at `https://api.specstream.ai/crawl4ai` in place of `http://localhost:11235`, with the SpecStream key in place of the server's token.

```
import os, requests

KEY = os.environ["SPECSTREAM_API_KEY"]

reply = requests.post(
    "https://api.specstream.ai/crawl4ai/crawl",  # was http://localhost:11235/crawl
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {KEY}"},
    json={"urls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping"]},
    timeout=60,
).json()

for page in reply["results"]:
    print(page["url"], page["status_code"], page["markdown"]["raw_markdown"][:200])
```

3. Point the Parallel client at `https://api.specstream.ai/parallel` and send the SpecStream key in place of the Parallel key.

```
import os
from parallel import Parallel

# Before: Parallel(api_key=os.environ["PARALLEL_API_KEY"])
client = Parallel(
    api_key=os.environ["SPECSTREAM_API_KEY"],
    base_url="https://api.specstream.ai/parallel",
)
search = client.search(search_queries=["open source web crawlers for LLMs"], mode="fast")
for result in search.results:
    print(result.title, result.url)
```

4. Leave the rest. Each page with text is billed at $0.0008 and each search of up to 10 results at $0.001, and you can stop running the Crawl4AI container. On a `429`, wait the seconds in `Retry-After` and send the call again; nothing was charged.

## Frequently asked questions

### Is Crawl4AI better than Parallel?

They do different halves of the job: Crawl4AI reads the URLs you give it, and Parallel finds pages at $1 to $5 per 1,000 searches and reads them at $1 per 1,000 URLs. SpecStream does both on one key, at $1 per 1,000 searches and $0.80 per 1,000 pages, with no server to run.

### Crawl4AI vs Parallel pricing: what does each cost?

Crawl4AI's library is free on your own hosting, and its hosted plans run from $10 a month for 10,000 credits, at 0.1 to 2 credits a page and 1 credit a search. Parallel costs $1 per 1,000 searches on `turbo` and `fast`, $5 on `basic` and `advanced`, and $1 per 1,000 URLs for Extract. SpecStream costs $0.0008 a page and $0.001 a search from a balance that never expires.

### Can I use Crawl4AI and Parallel together?

Yes, on one SpecStream key: Crawl4AI server calls go to `https://api.specstream.ai/crawl4ai` and Parallel search calls to `https://api.specstream.ai/parallel`, each in its own JSON, from one balance, one request log and one spending limit.

### Does Crawl4AI have a hosted API?

Yes. On Nov 12, 2026 its pricing page lists a Free plan with 1,000 credits a month and paid plans of $10, $99 and $499 a month, with failed calls free.

### Can Parallel be self hosted?

No. Parallel's own comparison says it has no self hosted option, and under its standard terms it may use inputs and outputs to train its models. SpecStream needs no server, and a key with `zero_retention` keeps no request text and no answer after the reply.

### Do the Crawl4AI and Parallel Python clients work with SpecStream?

Yes. For crawl4ai 0.9.5, build `Crawl4aiDockerClient(base_url="https://api.specstream.ai")` and call `authenticate` with your SpecStream key. For `parallel-web`, pass `base_url="https://api.specstream.ai/parallel"` with the SpecStream key. The calls and the replies stay as they are.

### Is there a free tier?

New SpecStream accounts get $10 of credit, no card, which covers 12,500 pages or 10,000 searches. Credit you buy never expires.

## Sources

SpecStream wrote this page. Each figure for Crawl4AI, Parallel and the other tools comes from that company's own page.

- [SpecStream pricing](https://specstream.ai/pricing), read Nov 12, 2026
- [SpecStream for agents](https://specstream.ai/agents.md), read Nov 12, 2026
- [SpecStream benchmarks](https://specstream.ai/benchmarks), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Crawl4AI pricing](https://www.crawl4ai.com/pricing), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Crawl4AI terms](https://www.crawl4ai.com/terms), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Crawl4AI docs](https://docs.crawl4ai.com/), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Crawl4AI self hosting](https://docs.crawl4ai.com/core/self-hosting/), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Crawl4AI on GitHub](https://github.com/unclecode/crawl4ai), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Parallel pricing](https://docs.parallel.ai/getting-started/pricing.md), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Parallel advanced search settings](https://docs.parallel.ai/search/advanced-search-settings.md), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Parallel products and free credit](https://parallel.ai/pricing), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Crawl4AI vs. Parallel, by Parallel](https://parallel.ai/articles/crawl4ai-vs-parallel), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Firecrawl pricing](https://www.firecrawl.dev/pricing), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Tavily API credits](https://docs.tavily.com/documentation/api-credits.md), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Spider pricing](https://spider.cloud/pricing), read Nov 12, 2026