Agentic Index
Apify vs Firecrawl (2026)
Choose Firecrawl to turn websites into clean, LLM ready markdown or JSON through one focused API, and choose Apify for a full scraping platform with more than 45,000 prebuilt Actors, proxies, and an MCP server exposing them as agent tools. Firecrawl starts at 16 dollars a month billed yearly with a free tier and an open source core, while Apify starts at 29 dollars a month with a free tier. Single purpose crawling for AI pipelines versus a scraping ecosystem is the honest split.
| At a glance | Apify | Firecrawl |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Agent infrastructure | Agent infrastructure |
| Entry price | From $29/mo · free tier | From $16/mo billed yearly · free tier + open source |
| Free / trial | Free plan: $5/mo prepaid platform usage, no credit card | Free tier: 1,000 credits per month, no card. Open source core self hostable. |
| Pricing confidence | public exact | public exact |
| Feature |
A
Apify
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Action & orchestration | ||
|
Integrations & Tool Calling Ability to connect agents to real systems through native integrations, OAuth-authenticated actions, custom tools, APIs, webhooks, or MCP-compatible tools. |
Full / Explicit | Partial |
|
Workflow Orchestration Ability to sequence, branch, retry, route, and combine deterministic workflow nodes with autonomous agent steps. |
Partial | Partial |
|
Triggers & Channel Coverage How agents wake up and where they work: schedules, webhooks, message events, CRM events, inbox events, chat, email, voice, and collaboration tools. |
Partial | Partial |
| Knowledge & context | ||
|
Knowledge Grounding & RAG Ability to ground agent behavior in company data through document ingestion, retrieval, external knowledge APIs, semantic search, or RAG layers. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
|
Memory & State Persistence Ability to persist context across a run, conversation, workflow, user, team, or longer-term memory layer. |
Partial | No / Not documented |
| Control & trust | ||
|
Human Oversight & Guardrails Approval steps, consent checkpoints, escalation rules, structured guardrails, policy constraints, and pause/resume controls. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
|
Security, Identity & Governance RBAC, SSO, auditability, encryption, least-privilege tool access, compliance posture, and data handling policy. |
Full / Explicit | Partial |
|
Observability & Auditability Traces, logs, execution histories, metrics, audit events, and debugging detail for production agent behavior. |
Full / Explicit | No / Not documented |
|
Deployment & Data Residency Deployment modes and options, including SaaS, dedicated cloud, VPC, on-prem, hybrid, local runtime, and self-hosting. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
| Solution readiness | ||
|
Prebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Ready-made workflows, packaged employees, templates, blueprints, industry solutions, and role-specific agents that reduce time-to-value. |
Full / Explicit | Partial |
| Platform extensibility | ||
|
Model Flexibility & Routing Ability to work across multiple foundation models, route tasks to different models, or let buyers bring their own providers and keys. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
|
APIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Composability layer: stable APIs, SDKs, MCP tool consumption/serving, custom tools, and integration into internal systems. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Testing, Debugging & Optimization Testing, debugging, scoring, retries, fallbacks, quality gates, and optimization loops for improving agent workflows before and after deployment. |
Partial | No / Not documented |
| Specialist automation | ||
|
Browser & Computer Use Browser, desktop, or remote/local computer control for workflows that cannot be handled through stable APIs alone. |
Full / Explicit | Partial |
Pricing snapshot
Sourced from the Index pricing dataset · open each vendor's profile for full detail.
| Pricing |
A
Apify
|
|
|---|---|---|
|
Entry price Lowest public entry point |
From $29/mo · free tier | From $16/mo billed yearly · free tier + open source |
|
Pricing confidence How public the numbers are |
Public — exact | Public — exact |
|
Billing Primary billing axis |
compute units plus proxy GB, storage, and per Actor fees | Credits per API request (1 credit per page for scrape, crawl, map, monitor), within monthly subscription tiers |
|
Variable cost Workload / overage exposure |
High variable cost | Medium variable cost |
|
Free tier / trial Try before you buy |
Free tier
|
Free tier
|
|
Buying motion Self-serve vs sales call |
Mixed | Self-serve |
Choose Apify if
- Site specific scrapers, proxies, and scheduling from a marketplace save you building
- Exposing thousands of Actors to agents over MCP is directly useful
- Complex extraction targets need more than generic crawling
Choose Firecrawl if
- You want any URL converted to clean markdown for RAG with one call
- An open source core you can self host hedges vendor dependency
- Sixteen dollars a month entry pricing fits a lean AI pipeline budget