Firecrawl vs Crawl4AI in 2026

Both calls on one key

A team does not have to pick one crawler and rewrite the other. Each call keeps its path, its body and its parser; the address and the key change.

# Firecrawl, before and after
curl -X POST https://api.firecrawl.dev/v2/scrape \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $FIRECRAWL_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "https://example.com/pricing"}'
curl -X POST https://api.specstream.ai/firecrawl/v2/scrape \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPECSTREAM_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "https://example.com/pricing"}'

# 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"]}'

Each page with text on either route is one Extract API page at $0.0008, and a Firecrawl map is one page read.

What stays the same

On /firecrawl, a scrape returns success: true, data.markdown with the main text and data.metadata; data.html and data.rawHtml are not returned on a scrape. /v2/map and /v2/crawl answer in Firecrawl's JSON, and a crawl's status carries data[] with markdown, html, rawHtml, links and metadata. Every parameter is in the Firecrawl migration guide.

On /crawl4ai, /crawl takes 1 to 100 urls a call and each page answers on its own, so one missing page leaves the rest. cleaned_html, fit_markdown, media, screenshot and pdf are not returned. Errors keep Crawl4AI's {"detail": ...} body. Every parameter is in the Crawl4AI migration guide.

One price a page, and no server

Firecrawl sells credits by the month: Hobby is $19 for 5,000 and Standard $99 for 100,000, at 1 credit a page. Crawl4AI's library is free, and the server runs on your hosting with its browser and memory to size, or on hosted credits whose month's allowance does not carry over. On SpecStream every page with text costs $0.0008 from a balance that never expires, a page with no text is not charged, and a busy call gets a 429 with Retry-After and charges nothing.

Scored on the official benchmarks

The Extract API that answers both routes scores 0.908 F1 on WCXB. The Search API on the same key 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. Every score and its method is on the benchmarks page.

A search on /firecrawl/v2/search runs the fast search unless it asks for page text. 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 and rows on one key

The same key reads up to 20 pages or documents a call with the Extract API at $0.80 per 1,000 pages, maps and crawls sites with POST /v1/map and POST /v1/crawl, searches the live web at $5 per 1,000 searches, and runs Deep Search, which returns every match for a request in plain words as structured rows at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row. Save a request and it reruns hourly to yearly, with each row labeled changed, unchanged or no longer matching.

SpecStream

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

Jina Reader

Reads one URL into text and charges tokens by content length, with no dollar rate on its Reader page. SpecStream answers its call at https://api.specstream.ai/jina for $0.0008 a page. Firecrawl vs Jina Reader.

Spider

Pay 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.

Apify

A store of scrapers paid by usage, with Starter at $19 a month covering $19 of usage. SpecStream returns every match for a request in plain words as rows at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row, with no scraper to pick.