Firecrawl vs Jina AI (2026): which should you pick?

Pick Firecrawl if

• Fits if you feed web pages into an LLM and want Markdown back
• Works for people happy to self-host the open-source core

Look elsewhere if

• Tight if you stay free: 1,000 credits, 2 concurrent requests and low rate limits
• Watch out: JSON, Question and Highlight formats add 4 credits a page
• Watch out: Agent, Browser and the managed dashboards are Cloud only, not in the open-source version
• Pricey if you scale: $83 for 100,000 credits and $333 for 500,000, and pay-as-you-go is for paid plans only

Pick Jina AI if

• Fits if you want page text for a model with a single URL prefix
• Works for people who also need embeddings or a reranker from the same key

Look elsewhere if

• Tight if you want search without a key, since the search endpoint is blocked without one
• Watch out: the OCR option uses 40 times more tokens, and each search starts at 10,000
• Watch out: the free key lets you use up the 10 million tokens and then nothing renews
• Watch out: auto top-up is on offer, and the price may be charged in USD, EUR or another currency

Firecrawl

• Per-page cost rises with format: JSON, Question and Highlight formats add 4 credits per page on Scrape and Crawl.
• The docs say Agent, Browser, managed dashboards, enhanced proxy paths and enterprise controls are Cloud-only.
• Pay-as-you-go (credits added in $5 steps up to a monthly limit you set) is for paid plans only.
• A page that returns an error status such as 403 or 404 still costs 1 credit.

Jina AI

• Token counts drive the bill: the jina-ocr-v1 option costs 40 times more tokens, and each search starts at 10,000 tokens.
• The search endpoint (s.jina.ai) is blocked without an API key.
• Tokens are bought as top-ups; the page notes an auto top-up, and the price may be charged in USD, EUR or other currencies.
• A new pricing model began on May 6, 2025; older auto-recharge settings keep the old price.

Firecrawl

Search with page content

Searches the web and returns full page content from the results, not only links. Costs 2 credits per 10 results.

Scrape to Markdown or JSON

Turns a URL into Markdown, structured JSON, screenshots or other formats. A basic scrape costs 1 credit per page.

Crawl and map

Crawl follows a site page by page at 1 credit per page. Map lists a site's URLs for 1 credit per call.

Interact

Scrapes a page, then clicks, fills forms or navigates it from AI prompts or code, at 2 credits per browser minute.

Open-source core

The core scrape, crawl, map and search APIs can be self-hosted with Docker Compose, per the docs.

SDKs and shared credits

Python, Node.js, cURL and CLI examples are shown. One credit balance is shared across all endpoints.

Jina AI

Reader

Prefix a URL with r.jina.ai to get its content as LLM-friendly text. Options include a CSS selector, a token budget and a choice of browser engine.

Web search

s.jina.ai searches the web and returns results as LLM-friendly text. Every request costs a fixed number of tokens, starting at 10,000.

Embeddings and reranker

Embeddings turn text or images into vectors and a reranker reorders results; both are on the same key and token balance.

MCP server

mcp.jina.ai can be added as an MCP server so an LLM can call the APIs directly.

Cloud marketplaces

Embeddings and reranker models can be deployed through AWS SageMaker, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, billed via those accounts.

Firecrawl

• Free$0

  1,000 credits a month (500 searches or 1,000 pages scraped), 2 concurrent requests.

• Hobby$16

  per month for 5,000 credits, billed annually ($19 billed monthly)

  5 concurrent requests, basic support, and extra credits at 1,000 per $5.

• Standard$83

  per month for 100,000 credits, billed annually ($99 billed monthly)

  25 concurrent requests, standard support, extra credits at 2,000 per $5.

• Growth$333

  per month for 500,000 credits, billed annually ($399 billed monthly)

  50 concurrent requests, priority support, extra credits at 2,500 per $5.

• Scale$599

  per month for 1,000,000 credits, billed annually ($749 billed monthly)

  100 concurrent requests, priority support, extra credits at 5,000 per $5.

• EnterpriseCustom

  Custom credits and concurrency, dedicated support and SLA, SSO, zero-data retention.

Jina AI

• Free key$0

  10 million free tokens on a new key. Free-key rate limits: 500 RPM for Reader, 100 RPM for search.

• Paid top-up$50

  one-time top-up, used as you go

  1 billion tokens at $0.050 per 1M tokens. Paid keys have the same rate limits as free keys.

• Premium top-up$500

  one-time top-up, used as you go

  11 billion tokens at $0.045 per 1M. Premium key: 5,000 RPM Reader, 24-hour support.

Firecrawl

• Annual discount

  Annual billing saves about 2 months

  Annual prices are lower than monthly (Standard $83 against $99 a month); the homepage banner says 2 months free when billed annually.

Jina AI

No public discounts listed.