FlyCrawl flycrawl.net
vs
Firecrawl firecrawl.dev:
Zero-Leak Architecture with 100% Feature Parity
Firecrawl brought LLM web-scraping to the mainstream. But for high-throughput enterprise workloads, infrastructure overhead and complex queue layers can challenge scalability. Here is how FlyCrawl (flycrawl.net) re-engineered the extraction stack with compiled Go & .NET Core microservices, delivering predictable memory usage and substantial cost efficiencies.
Engineered in compiled Go & ASP.NET Core for high throughput and efficient resource management.
- ✅ Lean process pooling: Direct OS page recycling without Chromium zombie processes
- ✅ Fast synchronous response: Direct streaming extraction (342ms p50) without queue bottlenecks
- ✅ 100% Wire Parity:
/scrape,/crawl,/map,/search,/extract - ✅ Native 1536 & 3072-dim Embeddings: Built-in vector upsert for Pinecone, Qdrant & pgvector
- ✅ Official MCP Server: Direct connection to Claude Desktop, Cursor, and Windsurf
- ✅ Smart Edge Caching (maxAge): 0-credit instant cache hits (<50ms)
- ✅ $0.40 – $0.97 / 1k pages: Monthly plans and Never-Expire options with zero failure charges
- ✅ Anti-Bot Resilience (98.4%): Built-in smart residential proxy rotation and stealth headers
Built on TypeScript / Node.js & Playwright container queues.
- ⚠️ 300MB - 1GB RAM: Higher consumption per worker container due to browser queue overhead
- ⚠️ ~800ms - 1,200ms latency: Higher latency due to cloud queue middleware (BullMQ/Redis)
- ⚠️ Requires multi-container cluster: Complex setup and high VPS memory requirement for self-hosting
- ⚠️ No Native Vector Embeddings: Requires separate embedding pipeline & OpenAI API key
- ⚠️ Credit Card Only (Stripe): Requires international credit cards, no native crypto payment options
- ⚠️ Strict Monthly Expiry: Unused credits do not roll over on standard monthly subscription tiers
Already Using Firecrawl? Switch with 1 Config Change
FlyCrawl's /api/v1/scrape response envelope includes standard data: { markdown, content, metadata } fields. Keep your existing Python or TypeScript codebase — simply pass api_url='https://flycrawl.net/api/v1' to your FirecrawlApp client instance.
firecrawl-py Client):
from firecrawl import FirecrawlApp
# 1. Drop-in: supply your FlyCrawl API key and point api_url to FlyCrawl
# (Standard endpoint: https://api.flycrawl.net/v1 — alias: https://flycrawl.net/api/v1)
app = FirecrawlApp(
api_key="fly_live_your_api_key_here",
api_url="https://api.flycrawl.net/v1"
)
# 2. Existing method calls work without modifications!
doc = app.scrape_url("https://example.com")
print(doc.data.markdown) # Clean Fit-Markdown extracted!@mendable/firecrawl-js):
import FirecrawlApp from '@mendable/firecrawl-js';
// 1. Point apiUrl to FlyCrawl standard API endpoint
const app = new FirecrawlApp({
apiKey: 'fly_live_your_api_key_here',
apiUrl: 'https://api.flycrawl.net/v1' // alias https://flycrawl.net/api/v1 also supported
});
// 2. Exact same response interface
const result = await app.scrapeUrl('https://example.com');
console.log(result.data?.markdown); // Output verified!FlyCrawl vs. Global Scraping Giants: The Honest Data
Don't take marketing claims at face value. Test real metrics, calculate your exact monthly LLM token savings, inspect side-by-side markdown outputs, or switch in 30 seconds with a 1-line code drop-in.
⚡ Median Latency (P50)
Average processing time per HTML/JS page (Lower is faster)
🧠 Token Bloat per 1,000 Words
Tokens ingested by LLM (Lower = Saves 60-90% API billing)
🛡️ Anti-Bot & Challenge Resilience
Observed extraction success rate on protected sites with residential proxy & browser emulation
💰 Total Cost per 100k Pages
Pay-as-you-go extraction price with residential proxy included
🔬 Scientific Benchmark Methodology & Test Protocol (2026)
RFC-Compliant AuditAll benchmark tests were conducted across a standardized sample of 500 diverse public URLs (E-commerce, Single Page Applications, Cloudflare Turnstile protected portals, News websites, and Scientific grant databases). Measurements were executed with warm connection pools from both US-East (Northern Virginia) and EU-Central (Frankfurt) edge clusters. Every single test is reproducible via our public benchmark studio.
E-commerce, SPAs, Cloudflare WAF, News, Wikipedia, NIH Grants.
Measured with 50 parallel concurrent workers on C# .NET 10 Async runtime.
Automated token solving without headless browser footprint.
Test any custom domain right now in our live Sandbox below.
| Architectural Metric | FlyCrawl flycrawl.net | Firecrawl firecrawl.dev | Crawl4ai Open-source | Jina Reader r.jina.ai | Apify Actor Cloud |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Median Latency (P50/P90)
Average speed for 100 HTML pages
|
⚡ 342ms / 680ms
Fast Static (Stealth JS: ~1.84s)
|
2,100ms / 4,800ms | 1,850ms / 3,900ms | 890ms / 2,200ms | 4,200ms / 9,500ms |
|
Multi-Page Token Bloat
Repetitive boilerplates in multi-page crawls
|
0% (Deduplicated) | 42% Token Waste | 38% Token Waste | 29% Token Waste | 55% Token Waste |
|
Anti-Bot & WAF Bypass Rate
Cloudflare Turnstile, DataDome, Akamai
|
🛡️ 98.4% | 88.2% | 65.0% | 72.1% | 84.5% |
|
Zero-LLM Structured Extraction
Schema.org, JSON-LD, Microdata
|
✅ $0 Auto (Built-in) | ⚠️ Costs LLM Tokens | ⚠️ Python Scripting | ❌ Not Supported | ⚠️ Requires Actor |
|
Built-in Vector Embeddings
1536/3072-dim vectors for Pinecone/Qdrant
|
✅ Native Included ($0) | ❌ External Pipeline | ❌ External Pipeline | ⚠️ Separate Jina API | ❌ External Pipeline |
|
Price per 100,000 Pages
Pay-as-you-go commercial rate
|
💎 $66.00 (Pro) / $40.00 (Scale)
💎 Credits NEVER Expire
|
$83.00 - $99.00 / mo
Credits expire monthly
|
Self-Hosted / Cloud | $0.02 / 1M Tokens | $49.00 - $499.00 (Compute) |
|
Global & Web3 Billing
Zero KYC, USDT, TON, TRX, Local
|
🌐 USDT, TON, TRX & Web3 Cards | Stripe Cards Only | Self-Managed | Stripe Only | Credit Card Only |
Crawl Volume & LLM Model Parameters
Adjust the slider to your expected workload to view instant financial savings.
Official SDKs & 30-Second Drop-in Migration
Install official FlyCrawl libraries directly or keep your existing Firecrawl codebase with 1-line base URL swap.
Full Feature Matrix & Benchmark
| Capability / Feature |
FlyCrawl
flycrawl.net
|
🔥
Firecrawl
firecrawl.dev
|
|---|---|---|
| Single Page Scrape (/scrape) | ✅ Fit-Markdown & JSON (342ms static p50) (see benchmarks) | ✅ Markdown & JSON (~1,200ms) |
| Site Mapping (/map) | ✅ Instant <2s Sitemaps | ✅ Sitemaps & Links |
| Live Search + Scrape (/search) | ✅ Search + Markdown in 1 call | ✅ Web Search |
| Parallel Batch Scraper (/batch/scrape) | ✅ 50+ Concurrent URLs with SSE | ✅ Batch URLs |
| LLM Schema Extraction (/extract) | ✅ JSON Schema + Prompt | ✅ Schema + Prompt |
| Model Context Protocol (MCP Server) | ✅ Built-in /api/v1/mcp (Cursor, Claude) | ✅ Community npm package |
| Browser Interactivity (Actions) | ✅ Click, Scroll, Wait, Type | ✅ Click, Scroll, Wait |
| Smart Caching (maxAge) | ✅ 0-credit instant cache hits (<50ms) | ✅ 2-day default cache |
| Payment & Global Accessibility | ✅ Cards, Invoices & Web3 Crypto (USDT, TON, TRX, BTC, ETH) | Stripe Card Only (Requires international credit card) |
| Free Tier Offering | 100 free test credits on sign-up (up to 500 with invite) | ✅ 1,000 free credits / month (recurring free tier) |
| Pricing per 1,000 Scraped Pages (Verified Feb 2026) | $0.40 – $0.97 / 1k (Starter $29/30k, Pro $79/120k, Scale $199/500k; never-expire rollover from $31, micro packs from $5) | ~$0.99 – $5.33 / 1k ($16/3k Starter, $99/100k Standard; 1 credit static, 5 credits for JS/stealth) |
| Composable Selective Extraction API | ✅ 100% Composable (MD + CSV + JSONL + Vector + Logo in 1 request) | Standard formats (Markdown or HTML) |
| Universal Multilingual PDF Engine | ✅ Native Bidi + CJK (Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Persian, Arabic) | Standard PDF extraction |
| High-Res Logo & Brand Vector Extractor (/v1/logo) | ✅ Official SVG vectors, Apple Touch, Favicon 256px, Web Manifest | Not available out of box |
| Direct Data Exports: RFC 4180 CSV (BOM) & JSONL | ✅ Excel-ready UTF-8 BOM CSV + OpenAI Fine-Tuning JSONL | Raw Markdown / HTML |
| Direct Web-to-Vector DB Pipeline (/v1/vector) | ✅ Native 1536 & 3072-dim embeddings ready for Pinecone/Qdrant upsert | Relies on external embedding calls |
| Open-Source Community & Stars | ⚠️ Emerging agile project (Open-source SDKs) | ✅ Mature ecosystem (30k+ GitHub stars & large community) |
| Enterprise Compliance & SOC2 | 🛡️ SOC 2 Type II audit in-progress; zero-retention (X-Zero-Retention) & enterprise NDA available | ✅ SOC2 Type II certified for enterprise procurement |
| Residential Proxy Geo-Coverage | 10+ core regional hubs with smart IP rotation (50+ on Enterprise) | ✅ 190+ countries in custom enterprise tiers |
| Persistent Browser Sessions & Auth (/sessions) | ✅ AES-256-GCM Encrypted Sessions, Automated Login Actions, 7-day TTL & pass session_id | Browser Profiles (Manual cookie attachment) |
| Autonomous Web Agent (/agent) | ✅ Multi-Step ReAct Engine: Autonomous search, parallel crawl, JSON schema synthesis & SSE streaming + flycrawl_agent MCP tool | Experimental /agent endpoint |
| Smart Website Change Monitoring (/monitor) | ✅ 0 Credits Billed If Unchanged (Zero-Waste Policy), SHA-256 hashing, AI semantic diffs & HMAC webhooks | Standard recurring crawl (credits billed on every scheduled run regardless of changes) |
| Self-Hosting & Private Cloud (On-Prem) | ✅ Enterprise Private Cluster (Kubernetes / Docker) with dedicated residential IP pools & custom SLA | ✅ Open-source Docker Compose for basic local scraping |
How We Benchmarked: Real-World Test Methodology
In engineering, performance claims without reproducible parameters are meaningless. Here are the exact hardware specs, target datasets, and measurement tools used to evaluate P95 latency and token reduction across FlyCrawl and competitor infrastructure.
Includes heavy Single Page Applications (Next.js docs, React.dev), Cloudflare Turnstile & DataDome protected portals, dense e-commerce tables, and dynamic financial dashboards.
Probing nodes deployed in AWS eu-central-1 (Frankfurt) and us-east-1 (N. Virginia) with 10Gbps symmetric fiber. 1,000 requests per tier under identical network jitter.
Measured using official OpenAI tiktoken (cl100k_base & o200k_base / GPT-4o tokenizer). Fit-Markdown strips inline SVGs, script bloat, and navigation chrome while preserving 100% of body text.
curl -X POST https://flycrawl.net/api/v1/scrape -d '{"url":"https://stripe.com"}'
Ready to Experience Next-Generation Web Scraping?
Try FlyCrawl today with 100 free credits at flycrawl.net. No credit card required.