Firecrawl vs Vercel
AI-native web scraping + crawling API — LLM-ready data extraction
vs. Frontend cloud for Next.js and modern web frameworks
Pricing tiers
Firecrawl
Free
500 credits one-time. 2 concurrent requests. For exploration.
Free
Self-Hosted (OSS)
AGPL-3.0 licensed. Run on your own infra.
$0 base (usage-based)
Hobby
$19/month ($16 annual). 3,000 credits/month. 5 concurrent.
$19/mo
Standard
$99/month ($83 annual). 100,000 credits. 50 concurrent. Most popular.
$99/mo
Growth
$399/month ($333 annual). 500,000 credits. 100 concurrent.
$399/mo
Enterprise
Custom. Dedicated support + SLA, bulk discounts, zero-data retention, SSO, advanced security.
Custom
Vercel
Hobby (Free)
Free forever. 100 GB bandwidth, 1M functions, 360 GB-hrs memory, 1M edge requests. 1 developer. Hard caps.
Free
Pro
$20/user/month. 1 TB bandwidth, pay-as-you-go overages. Team seats, concurrent builds.
$20/mo
Enterprise
Custom pricing. SLA, SSO, audit logs, dedicated support.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing free on Firecrawl vs hobby on Vercel.
| Metric | Firecrawl | Vercel |
|---|---|---|
| bandwidth gb month | — | 100 GB/month |
| edge requests | — | 1000000 requests/month |
| function invocations | — | 1000000 invocations/month |
| memory gb hrs | — | 360 GB-hrs/month |
| team members | — | 1 users |
Features
Firecrawl · 16 features
- Batch Scrape — Scrape many URLs in parallel.
- Crawl — Crawl an entire site following links. Returns all pages.
- Custom Headers/Cookies — Scrape behind login via headers.
- Deep Research (beta) — AI agent that autonomously researches a query across many sites.
- Extract (AI) — Structured extraction with a JSON schema → Firecrawl runs LLM for you.
- JavaScript Rendering — Headless browser handles SPAs, React/Vue sites.
- LLM-Ready Markdown — Cleaned + normalized Markdown optimized for LLM ingestion.
- Map — Fast — returns all URLs on a site without fetching content.
- MCP Server — Official MCP for Claude / Cursor / Agents.
- Open Source (AGPL) — Self-host the entire stack via Docker.
- PDF Parsing — Extract text from PDFs.
- Residential Proxies — Bypass anti-bot + geoblocks (paid).
- Scrape — Single URL → clean markdown/JSON/HTML.
- Screenshots — Visual screenshot alongside content.
- Search (beta) — Google-like search API returning results + content.
- Structured Output — Extract to JSON schema via LLM.
Vercel · 15 features
- Cron Jobs — Scheduled serverless functions. JSON config in vercel.json.
- Edge Functions — V8-isolate serverless functions at edge locations. Lower cold start than Lambda.
- Edge Middleware — Intercept requests at edge before hitting origin — auth, routing, A/B tests.
- Git-based Deploys — Auto-deploy from GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket on every push. Preview URLs for every…
- Image Optimization — On-the-fly resize, format conversion (AVIF, WebP), CDN caching.
- Incremental Static Regeneration — Re-generate static pages on-demand or via revalidate. Next.js-native.
- Log Drains — Stream logs to Datadog, Axiom, Logtail, HTTP endpoints.
- Preview Deployments — Unique URL per Git branch/PR. Password-protect or share. Infinite.
- Serverless Functions — Node.js, Python, Go. AWS Lambda under the hood. Up to 15 min duration.
- Speed Insights — Real User Monitoring. FCP, LCP, CLS, INP per page.
- Vercel Blob — Managed object storage (S3-compatible API).
- Vercel KV (Redis) — Managed Redis via Upstash. Edge-accessible.
- Vercel Marketplace — One-click integrations: Supabase, Clerk, Sentry, PostHog, Resend, 100+ services.
- Vercel Postgres — Managed Neon Postgres. Edge-accessible with @vercel/postgres.
- Web Analytics — Privacy-friendly web analytics. Core Web Vitals, visitors, pages.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Firecrawl | Vercel |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | Firecrawl CLI | Vercel CLI |
| SDK | firecrawl-go, firecrawl-js, firecrawl-py | @vercel/client |
| REST | Firecrawl REST API | Vercel REST API |
| MCP | Firecrawl MCP Server | Vercel MCP |
| OTHER | — | Edge Runtime Bindings |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Firecrawl and Vercel are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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