Firecrawl

ship

Turn entire websites into clean, LLM-ready markdown or structured data.

Visit firecrawl.dev →Add to kit Open in Noemium

ledger entry · observed by @whysanesanders

The go-to tool for scraping site content into markdown for RAG. Handles dynamic sites well and the self-hosted option keeps costs down. Very large sites need rate-limiting and chunking discipline.

Strengths

Go-to scrape-to-markdown path for RAG, including many dynamic sites.
Self-host option keeps cloud page-volume pricing off the critical path.

Known limitations

Large sites require careful rate limiting and caching.
Complex JavaScript apps can still break extraction.
Cloud pricing climbs with page volume.

Use it when

Turning a docs site or blog into LLM-ready markdown.
RAG pipelines that need structured extraction, not raw HTML.

Skip it when

The target is a huge site you cannot rate-limit and chunk.
The app is a brittle JavaScript SPA that still breaks extraction.
Cloud crawl volume is the only option and the bill would spike.

Floor guide

Install

Cloud at firecrawl.dev or self-host from mendableai/firecrawl. Start with the cloud free credits.

Requirements

A target site you are allowed to crawl
A sink (markdown files or a vector store)

Cost

OSS self-host is free. Cloud: 1,000 credits/mo free, then Hobby/Standard/Growth. Page volume is the bill.

Security

Crawling sends the target HTML to Firecrawl Cloud unless you self-host. Do not point it at authenticated app pages you do not own.

Breaks when

The site is a brittle SPA and extraction comes back empty.
You crawl a huge site with no rate limit and get banned.

Buy-check

·Price — freemium, open source self-host free; cloud 1,000 credits/mo free, then Hobby/Standard/Growth paid as of 2026-08-19. Open the pricing page, not a screenshot.
·Free tier — Free tier exists — burn it first.
·Cancel fallout — What happens to your data/projects on cancel — check the ToS, not the FAQ.
·Seat math — Per-seat pricing multiplies quietly. Count seats before the annual plan.
·Who skips it — Also skipped when: The target is a huge site you cannot rate-limit and chunk.; The app is a brittle JavaScript SPA that still breaks extraction..

Price trail — 1 revisionchangelog →

2026-W34open source self-host free; cloud from $16/moopen source self-host free; cloud 1,000 credits/mo fr…

Facts

pricing: freemium¹
price note: open source self-host free; cloud 1,000 credits/mo free, then Hobby/Standard/Growth paid
free tier: yes
open source: yes
api: yes
self-host: yes
category: data
evidence: source-verified