HONEST ARCHITECTURAL BENCHMARK
FlyCrawl vs Firecrawl.dev:
Zero-Leak Architecture with 100% Feature Parity
Firecrawl brought LLM web-scraping to the mainstream. But when we tried crawling 70,000 messy commercial websites on real infrastructure, we hit memory limits, ballooning Node.js queues, and cloud bills that made no sense. Here is how we re-engineered the stack from scratch.
⚡ FlyCrawl
Engineered in compiled Go & ASP.NET Core for maximum throughput.
- ✅ < 50MB RAM footprint with direct OS page recycling
- ✅ Sub-2s average latency on standard HTTP sites
- ✅ 100% API Parity:
/scrape,/crawl,/map,/search,/extract - ✅ Official MCP Server: Connects to Claude Desktop, Cursor, ChatGPT
- ✅ Smart Edge Caching (maxAge): 0-credit instant cache hits
- ✅ Affordable Pay-As-You-Go ($0.0019/page): Web3 Crypto checkout
- ✅ Bypasses local & regional WAFs: (ArvanCloud, Cloudflare Turnstile)
🔥 Firecrawl.dev
Built on TypeScript / Node.js & Playwright container queues.
- ⚠️ 300MB - 1GB RAM per worker container
- ⚠️ Higher latency due to heavy cloud queue middleware
- ⚠️ Requires 8+ Docker containers for self-hosting
- ⚠️ Starts at $99/mo (expensive for high-volume jobs)
- ⚠️ Struggles with geo-restricted & regional CDN blocks
Full Feature Matrix & Benchmark
| Capability | FlyCrawl | Firecrawl v2 |
|---|---|---|
Single Page Scrape (/scrape) |
✅ Fit-Markdown & JSON | ✅ Markdown & JSON |
Site Mapping (/map) |
✅ Instant <2s Sitemaps | ✅ Sitemaps & Links |
Live Search + Scrape (/search) |
✅ Search + Markdown in 1 call | ✅ Web Search |
Parallel Batch Scraper (/batch/scrape) |
✅ 50+ Concurrent URLs | ✅ Batch URLs |
LLM Schema Extraction (/extract) |
✅ JSON Schema + Prompt | ✅ Schema + Prompt |
| Model Context Protocol (MCP Server) | ✅ Claude / Cursor / ChatGPT | ✅ Claude Desktop / Cursor |
| Browser Interactivity (Actions) | ✅ Click, Scroll, Wait, Type | ✅ Click, Scroll, Wait |
Smart Caching (maxAge) |
✅ 0-credit instant cache | ✅ 2-day default cache |
| Payment & Global Accessibility | ✅ Web3 Crypto (USDT, TRX, TON) | ⚠️ Stripe Only ($99/mo min) |
Ready to experience next-generation web scraping?
Try FlyCrawl today with 100 free credits. No credit card required.