Firecrawl
vs
Firecrawl vs Diffbot
Firecrawl is the LLM-native crawler that turns whole sites into clean Markdown and structured data: fast onboarding, generous free tier, agent-friendly defaults. Diffbot is a decade-old AI + computer-vision extraction service built around a Knowledge Graph of the public web. Same broad goal (turn pages into structured data), very different shape: Firecrawl is a self-serve crawl-and-Markdown product priced for developers; Diffbot is an enterprise extraction platform priced for organizations and analysts.
Key differences.
Cost, side by side.
| Pricing model | Firecrawl | Diffbot |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 500 credits / mo, no card | 10,000 credits / mo |
| Entry | Hobby $19/mo (3,000 credits) | Startup $299/mo (250,000 credits) |
| Mid | Standard $99/mo (100,000 credits) | Plus $899/mo (1M credits) |
| Scale | Growth $399/mo (500,000 credits) | Enterprise (custom) |
| Model | Flat monthly credit plans, per-page | Flat monthly credit plans, per-call |
Firecrawl prices at the indie/developer end with a generous free tier and a $19 entry. Diffbot prices for the enterprise: $299/mo to start, with 10,000 free credits a month after the trial. Different jobs, different price points; compare on the workload you actually run.
Feature by feature.
| Feature | Firecrawl | Diffbot |
|---|---|---|
| JavaScript rendering | Yes | Yes |
| Residential proxies | Yes (via add-on) | Partial |
| CAPTCHA solving | Yes | No |
| Geotargeting | Limited | No |
| Markdown-first output | Yes (flagship) | No (typed entities) |
| Article / content extraction | Yes | Yes (flagship) |
| AI / LLM extraction | Yes (LLM-native) | Yes (computer-vision + NLP) |
| Knowledge Graph | No | Yes (public-web entities) |
| Whole-site crawling | Yes (flagship) | Yes (Crawlbot) |
| Google SERP API | No | No (own Knowledge Graph search) |
| Screenshots | No | No |
| PDF output | No | No |
| MCP server | No | Yes |
| Self-serve sign-up | Yes (no card) | 14-day trial then sales-led |
| Per-success billing | Partial | No (credits billed on call) |
An honest look at each.
Firecrawl- $19 entry tier with a real free plan, sign up in seconds
- Markdown-first output drops straight into a RAG pipeline
- Whole-site crawling and sitemap-based discovery are flagship features
- LLM-native extraction with prompt-based shaping
- Active product velocity, agent-friendly defaults
- No Google SERP API, screenshots, PDF or MCP server
- Smaller residential proxy pool than enterprise-tier alternatives
- No Knowledge Graph or entity-linking capability
- Less proven on the largest-scale enterprise workloads
- Knowledge Graph of the public web with billions of entities
- Computer-vision extraction handles visually-driven pages
- 10,000 free credits / month is a substantial sandbox
- Decade-plus track record on enterprise extraction workloads
- Native MCP server for AI agents
- Expensive entry point ($299/mo Startup tier)
- Not a general scraper: no CAPTCHA solving, weak proxies
- No SERP API, screenshots or PDF
- Output is typed entities, not the Markdown most RAG stacks want
We do our best to keep this comparison accurate and up-to-date. If you notice any discrepancies, please let us know.
Our take: Firecrawl for the indie/RAG stack, Diffbot for the enterprise knowledge layer
If you're a developer or small team building a RAG pipeline, an agent, or a Markdown-first ingest, Firecrawl is the obvious starting point: generous free tier, $19 entry, output shaped for LLMs. If you need enterprise-grade entity extraction with a Knowledge Graph of the public web behind it, Diffbot is the heavier, pricier, more analytically-rich option. They're optimised for different buyers; compare on your real workload rather than head-to-head feature lists.