Firecrawl Alternative
The Cost-Effective Alternative to Firecrawl
Get LLM-ready structured data with pay-as-you-go pricing. No page limits, no monthly subscriptions.
- Pay-as-you-go — no monthly page limits
- Firecrawl-compatible API endpoint for zero-effort migration
- 5-tier anti-bot escalation built in
Why Teams Switch from Firecrawl
No monthly page limits
AlterLab charges per request with a dollar balance. Scrape as many or as few pages as you need — no monthly caps or overage fees.
Firecrawl-compatible endpoint
AlterLab offers a Firecrawl-compatible API endpoint. Point your existing code at AlterLab and it works immediately — no rewrite needed.
Deeper anti-bot handling
AlterLab automatically escalates through 5 protection tiers including residential proxies and full browser CAPTCHA solving for sites that block simple requests.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | AlterLab | Firecrawl |
|---|---|---|
| LLM-ready output (markdown) | ||
| Pay-as-you-go pricing | ||
| Crawl/sitemap discovery | ||
| Anti-bot tiers | 5 automatic | Basic |
| CAPTCHA solving | ||
| Residential proxies | ||
| Balance never expires | ||
| Structured extraction | ||
| MCP server for AI agents | ||
| Firecrawl-compatible API | N/A |
Migration Takes Minutes
Estimated time: 2 minutes
from firecrawl import FirecrawlApp
app = FirecrawlApp(api_key="YOUR_KEY")
result = app.scrape_url(
"https://example.com",
params={"formats": ["markdown"]}
)from firecrawl import FirecrawlApp
# Just change the API URL — same SDK works
app = FirecrawlApp(
api_key="YOUR_ALTERLAB_KEY",
api_url="https://api.alterlab.io/firecrawl"
)
result = app.scrape_url(
"https://example.com",
params={"formats": ["markdown"]}
)Frequently Asked Questions
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Anti-Bot Handling API
Automatic challenge resolution — works out of the box for all protected sites.
Pricing
From $0.0002/request. No subscriptions. Balance never expires.
Your first scrape.
Sixty seconds.
$1 free credit — up to 5,000 scrapes. No credit card.
Just a POST request.
No credit card required · $1 free credit, up to 5,000 scrapes · Balance never expires