Firecrawl Pricing in 2026: Plans, Credits, and Real Costs

Firecrawl uses credits rather than charging one fixed price for every API call. A basic scrape, crawl, or map normally costs one credit, but structured extraction, PDF parsing, browser interaction, scraped search results, monitoring options, and other features can consume more.

That distinction matters when comparing plans. A 100,000-credit plan can cover 100,000 basic pages, but only 20,000 pages if every page uses one structured JSON format that adds four credits.

This guide explains Firecrawl's current plans, what consumes credits, when pay-as-you-go is cheaper than upgrading, and how to calculate the likely cost of a real workload.

Quick Answer

Firecrawl has a free plan with 1,000 monthly credits. Paid plans start with Hobby at $19 month-to-month or $190 per year for 5,000 credits per month. Standard costs $99 monthly, Growth costs $399, and Scale costs $749; annual billing lowers their displayed monthly equivalents to $83, $333, and $599. A basic page costs one credit, while optional extraction and browser features can raise the total.

Key Takeaways

• Firecrawl pricing is credit-based. Scrape and Crawl normally cost one credit per returned page, Map costs one per call, and Search starts at two credits per ten results.
• One page does not always mean one credit. JSON, question, highlights, audio, video, or PII-redaction options add four credits per page; some modifiers can stack.
• Firecrawl offers five public tiers. Free includes 1,000 monthly credits; Hobby includes 5,000; Standard 100,000; Growth 500,000; and Scale 1 million.
• Annual billing is cheaper but does not provide the year's credits upfront. Firecrawl bills the annual amount once, while the included credits still reset in monthly allotments.
• Most plan credits do not roll over. Current documentation gives annual Scale one month of rollover. Purchased pay-as-you-go credits remain usable while the paid subscription stays active but expire when it ends.
• Capacity can determine the plan before credit volume does. Concurrency and endpoint rate limits increase with each tier.
• Firecrawl Cloud and raw proxies solve different layers. Firecrawl returns processed web content; a proxy changes the route and exit IP used by a collector you operate.

Methodology and disclosure: Proxidize reviewed Firecrawl's official pricing page, machine-readable pricing page, and billing documentation on October 5, 2026. Prices below are public USD prices before tax. Calculated examples assume one billing month, no existing credits, no coupon, no negotiated agreement, and no account-specific offer. We did not fund every plan or run a credentialed billing test. Firecrawl can change its plans and credit rules, so verify the checkout and documentation before purchasing.

Firecrawl Pricing at a Glance

Firecrawl offers Free, Hobby, Standard, Growth, Scale, and custom Enterprise access. The annual column below shows both Firecrawl's rounded monthly equivalent and the actual annual amount charged.

Source: Firecrawl's official pricing page. The page labels prices as effective September 4, 2026.

The annual prices are discounts against 12 monthly payments. They are not flexible monthly subscriptions at the lower price. For example, Standard's displayed annual equivalent is $83 per month, but Firecrawl charges $990 for the year.

What Each Plan Is Best Suited For

Free is useful for evaluation, small tests, and workloads that stay under 1,000 basic pages per month. It does not support pay-as-you-go. Credit-consuming requests return HTTP 402 after the balance reaches zero.

Hobby fits small tools and irregular workloads around 5,000 basic pages. Its overage rate is the highest among paid tiers, so a workload that repeatedly exceeds the allowance may be cheaper on Standard.

Standard is the first large jump in included volume: 100,000 credits and 25 concurrent browsers. It also provides a lower overage price than Hobby.

Growth raises the allowance to 500,000 credits and adds 50 concurrent browsers, higher rate limits, priority support, and Slack support.

Scale provides 1 million monthly credits, 100 concurrent browsers, the lowest public pay-as-you-go rate, invoiced billing, and one month of credit rollover on an annual subscription.

Enterprise is quote-based. Firecrawl lists custom credits and concurrency, an SLA, dedicated support, bulk discounts, zero-data retention, SSO, and advanced security controls.

How Firecrawl Credits Work

Credits are shared across Firecrawl endpoints. A plan does not give the customer separate balances for Scrape, Search, Crawl, or Interact.

The basic calculation is:

The cost in dollars then depends on whether the required credits fit within the plan allowance or require pay-as-you-go increments.

Base Credit Costs

Firecrawl's billing documentation is the best source for the current endpoint and option rules. The pricing page is useful for plan selection, but the billing page contains more of the cases that can change an invoice.

Additional Credit Costs

Some Scrape options add credits to the one-credit base. The same per-page modifiers can apply when Crawl or Search uses Scrape internally.

Modifiers can stack. Firecrawl gives these examples:

• JSON plus Zero Data Retention: 1 + 4 + 1 = 6 credits per page.
• JSON plus PII redaction: 1 + 4 + 4 = 9 credits per page.

This is why estimating Firecrawl cost from URL count alone can be misleading.

Enhanced Proxy Requests No Longer Add Credits

Older Firecrawl pages and third-party reviews may say Enhanced Mode costs five credits. Firecrawl's current billing documentation lists an enhanced proxy request or automatic escalation at no additional credit cost beyond the one-credit basic request. Its changelog says the former five-credit charge stopped applying on August 17, 2026.

That is a useful example of why Firecrawl pricing should be checked against current documentation rather than an older review.

What Does Firecrawl Cost for Common Monthly Workloads?

The next table calculates the lowest public month-to-month route for basic Scrape or Crawl pages. It allows pay-as-you-go on a paid plan where that is cheaper than upgrading.

These are calculations, not checkout quotes. They exclude tax and assume every returned page uses only the one-credit base format.

The 25,000-page row reveals an unintuitive breakpoint. Hobby plus 20,000 extra credits would cost $119:

Standard costs $99 and includes 100,000 credits, so upgrading is cheaper even though 75,000 credits may go unused.

Example: 10,000 Basic Pages

Hobby includes 5,000 credits. Another 5,000 Hobby credits require five $5 increments:

Standard would cost $99 month-to-month, so Hobby plus overage is cheaper for this isolated workload.

Example: 1,000 Pages With Structured JSON

One JSON format adds four credits to the one-credit base:

That workload fits exactly within Hobby for $19 month-to-month. It does not fit within the 1,000-credit Free allowance, even though only 1,000 URLs are processed.

Example: 1,000 Pages With JSON and Zero Data Retention

JSON plus Zero Data Retention costs six credits per page:

Hobby includes 5,000 credits. One $5 pay-as-you-go increment adds another 1,000, producing a calculated total of $24 for that month.

Example: Mixed Basic and JSON Collection

Suppose a pipeline collects 8,000 basic pages and 2,000 pages with JSON extraction:

On Hobby, the first 5,000 credits come with the plan. Another 13,000 require 13 increments of $5:

That is cheaper than Standard's $99 month-to-month price for this one-month example. If the workload grows beyond about 21,000 total credits, Standard becomes cheaper than Hobby under the current rates.

Firecrawl Pay-as-You-Go Pricing

Pay-as-you-go is available only on paid self-service plans. Firecrawl adds credits in $5 increments when the plan balance runs out, up to a monthly spending limit chosen by the account owner.

The rate falls on higher plans. A team should therefore compare the full plan-plus-overage amount instead of assuming the cheapest subscription always produces the lowest bill.

Firecrawl also allows manual credit purchases at the same plan-specific rate. Manual purchases do not count toward the monthly automatic pay-as-you-go limit.

How the Spending Limit Works

The monthly pay-as-you-go limit accepts multiples of $5. Firecrawl rounds other values down. A $22 limit therefore permits four $5 increments, or $20 of automatic purchases.

The account can:

• set the limit to 0 to disable automatic overage;
• enter a finite multiple of $5 to cap it; or
• leave it blank for no monthly cap.

Firecrawl documents a temporary overage allowance so bursts can continue while a top-up settles. That allowance is operational headroom, not free credits that remain in the account.

Do Firecrawl Credits Roll Over or Expire?

Most included plan credits do not roll over. They reset at the monthly renewal date, including on annual plans.

Annual billing therefore lowers the subscription price but does not create one annual pool that can be consumed at any time. A Standard annual account receives its 100,000-credit allowance on a monthly cycle.

What Happens When You Cancel?

The paid plan stays active through the end of the current billing period. Firecrawl says purchased credits expire when the subscription ends, so a customer should use them before that date.

What Happens When You Upgrade or Downgrade?

An upgrade takes effect immediately. Firecrawl charges the full new-plan price without prorating the old subscription, resets the billing cycle, carries unused existing credits forward, and applies the new allowance and limits.

A downgrade takes effect on the next renewal date. The customer keeps the existing tier until then, but Firecrawl does not credit or refund unused time on the current plan.

Monthly vs Annual Firecrawl Pricing

Annual billing produces a lower effective rate when the workload is stable enough to use the credits each month.

The last column assumes basic one-credit pages and full use of every monthly allotment. It is not a universal per-page price. If half the credits expire unused, the effective cost per used page roughly doubles. Additional formats can multiply the credits needed per page.

Annual billing is most defensible when:

• the monthly workload is predictable;
• the team consistently uses most of the allowance;
• the required concurrency is unlikely to change;
• the product has already passed a representative trial; and
• the team is comfortable paying the annual total upfront.

Month-to-month billing is safer when the workload is seasonal, still being validated, or likely to move between tiers.

Search, Crawl, and Browser Costs Can Behave Differently

The same credit balance funds different kinds of work, but their units are not identical.

Search

Search costs two credits for up to ten results, rounded up in groups of ten. Eleven results therefore cost four base search credits.

If Search also scrapes the returned pages, the per-page Scrape costs are added. For 100 searches returning ten results each:

Crawl

Crawl charges for each processed page rather than once for the submitted domain. A crawl that returns 5,000 pages normally consumes 5,000 base credits, before format modifiers.

The default crawl limit can be much larger than an intended test. Set an explicit limit so an unexpectedly broad site does not consume more credits than planned.

Interact

Interact is time-based rather than page-based. A browser session using Playwright code only costs two credits per browser minute. A session using a prompt costs seven credits per minute. Firecrawl applies a one-minute minimum, so many short sessions can cost more than one long, controlled session.

Error Pages and Failed Requests

Firecrawl bases the charge on whether it returns a document, not whether the destination returned HTTP 200.

• If Firecrawl returns a captured 403 or 404 document, the base page credit is charged.
• If the scrape produces no document because the site never responded or rendering failed completely, Firecrawl normally charges zero credits.
• Some completed work can still be charged without a document, including threat scans, prompt-injection checks, browser time, agent activity, and cache-only misses.

Check metadata.statusCode before retrying. Automatically retrying a returned block page can spend credits without producing a valid record.

The Cost Metric That Matters: Accepted Output

The lowest advertised cost per credit is not necessarily the lowest cost for a useful dataset. A better production metric is:

For example, a job may return 100,000 documents for $99, but only 70,000 may contain the required fields, correct page type, current content, and acceptable status. The effective cost is then:

That number should also include downstream expenses when comparing architectures:

• model or extraction costs outside Firecrawl;
• storage and queue infrastructure;
• validation and deduplication;
• retry traffic;
• engineering and maintenance time; and
• raw proxy bandwidth if the team operates its own collector.

This turns a pricing comparison into an operational comparison rather than a comparison of headline units.

How to Estimate a Firecrawl Budget

Use this process before selecting a plan.

1. Count expected pages, not only starting URLs. A domain crawl can discover thousands of pages from one submitted URL.
2. Separate basic pages from expensive formats. Count JSON, questions, highlights, PDFs, PII redaction, and ZDR independently.
3. Estimate Search and Interact separately. Search uses result batches; Interact uses browser minutes.
4. Include retries and invalid documents. Returned error pages can still consume credits.
5. Apply the plan's included allowance. Do not assume annual credits can be pulled forward into one month.
6. Round pay-as-you-go to $5 increments. Small overages are not billed by the individual credit.
7. Check capacity limits. A plan that has enough credits may still have insufficient concurrency or endpoint rate limits.
8. Measure accepted output. Recalculate after a representative sample instead of relying only on planned URL volume.

A compact planning formula is:

The one-credit base page should appear only once in basic pages. Add the modifiers that apply to that page rather than counting the same page again.

Firecrawl Cloud vs Self-Hosting: What Changes the Cost?

Firecrawl is open source, but self-hosting is not the same as obtaining Firecrawl Cloud without cost.

Firecrawl's official comparison recommends Cloud for the fastest supported path and self-hosting when source or infrastructure control is worth the operational work.

Our Firecrawl self-hosting and proxy guide explains that deployment model in more detail.

Where Proxidize Fits

The cleanest way to compare these products is by responsibility:

Firecrawl Cloud bundles retrieval and processing into a managed API. Proxidize Residential Proxies provide the network layer for teams running their own scrapers, browsers, or self-hosted Firecrawl deployment. Current residential plans start at $25 per month for 25GB and include 195+ countries, country/city/ISP targeting, rotating or sticky sessions, HTTP(S)/SOCKS5 access, and bandwidth rollover.

A raw proxy is not a drop-in replacement for Firecrawl. It does not discover URLs, render JavaScript, produce clean Markdown, extract JSON, validate fields, or operate a crawl queue. Conversely, a team that already owns those components may not need to pay a per-page managed-extraction rate for every target.

Choose based on the layer the team wants to operate:

• Use Firecrawl Cloud when managed rendering, crawling, extraction, search, browser interaction, and low infrastructure overhead justify the credit price.
• Consider self-hosting or a custom collector when the team needs deeper control, already owns the extraction pipeline, or can operate browsers, queues, storage, retries, and proxies efficiently.
• Use direct access first when a cooperative public source works reliably without a proxy. Add proxy routing only when geography or demonstrated access requirements justify it.

For a broader architecture decision, see raw proxies vs scraping APIs.

Is Firecrawl Worth the Price?

Firecrawl is worth considering when the value comes from the managed output rather than the network request alone. It can remove work around JavaScript rendering, crawling, page cleanup, structured formats, browser operations, queues, and hosted scaling.

The pricing is less attractive when a workload uses expensive modifiers on every page, leaves much of a monthly allowance unused, or duplicates a mature collection pipeline the team already operates.

The practical decision is:

• start with Free for a representative sample;
• measure credits per accepted document;
• include concurrency and rate-limit needs;
• compare Hobby plus overage against Standard at low volumes;
• use month-to-month billing until usage is predictable; and
• choose annual billing only when the monthly allowance is likely to be used consistently.

Firecrawl's plans are easy to compare at the base rate. The harder—and more important—calculation is how many credits a valid production record actually consumes.