Firecrawl vs Appwrite
AI-native web scraping + crawling API — LLM-ready data extraction
vs. Open-source BaaS for building full-stack apps
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
Appwrite
Self-Hosted
Run Appwrite on your own infrastructure. MIT licensed — no usage limits.
$0 base (usage-based)
Cloud Free
Managed cloud. Hard caps: 1 team member, 1 database per project.
Free
Cloud Pro
From $15/member/month. 2 TB bandwidth, 150 GB storage, 200k MAU, 3.5M executions, unlimited databases + team members.
$15/mo
Cloud Scale
$599/month flat for the org. Higher included usage + advanced security. Deprecated in some regions — check.
$599/mo
Enterprise
Custom pricing. SOC 2, HIPAA (on request), dedicated infra, SLAs.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing free on Firecrawl vs free on Appwrite.
| Metric | Firecrawl | Appwrite |
|---|---|---|
| bandwidth gb month | — | 5 GB/month |
| databases per project | — | 1 databases |
| function duration s | — | 30 seconds |
| function executions | — | 750000 exec/month |
| mau | — | 75000 users/month |
| storage gb | — | 2 GB |
| team members | — | 1 members |
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.
Appwrite · 13 features
- Account (Auth) — User authentication: email/password, magic URLs, phone OTP, anonymous, 30+ OAuth…
- Avatars — Generated avatars, country flags, credit-card icons, QR codes, favicons.
- Databases — NoSQL collections with attribute types, indexes, permissions per document/collec…
- Events System — Unified event bus: subscribe in Functions, Webhooks, Realtime using event string…
- Functions — Serverless functions in 13+ runtimes (Node, Python, Go, Ruby, PHP, Dart, Deno, S…
- Messaging — Multi-channel messaging: Push (FCM/APNs), SMS (Twilio/Vonage/Msg91), Email (Mail…
- Migrations — Import from Firebase, Supabase, NHost, or another Appwrite project.
- Permissions (ACLs) — Per-document / per-collection ACLs: Role.user(), Role.team(), Role.any(), Role.g…
- Realtime — WebSocket subscriptions to events: database changes, auth, storage, function exe…
- Sites — Deploy static and SSR frameworks (Next, Nuxt, SvelteKit, Astro, Remix) direct fr…
- Storage — File buckets with access control, auto-transforms (image preview), antivirus, en…
- Teams — Group users with shared access + roles. Used for row-level permissions on resour…
- Webhooks — HTTP callbacks on any Appwrite event. Signed with x-appwrite-webhook-signature.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Firecrawl | Appwrite |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | Firecrawl CLI | Appwrite CLI |
| SDK | firecrawl-go, firecrawl-js, firecrawl-py | Android SDK (Kotlin), Apple SDK (Swift), Dart Server SDK, Deno SDK, Flutter SDK, Kotlin Server SDK, .NET Server SDK, Node.js Server SDK, PHP Server SDK, Python Server SDK, React Native SDK, Ruby Server SDK, Swift Server SDK, Web SDK (browser) |
| REST | Firecrawl REST API | REST API |
| GRAPHQL | — | GraphQL API |
| MCP | Firecrawl MCP Server | Appwrite MCP Server |
| OTHER | — | Realtime WebSocket |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Some links to Firecrawl and Appwrite may be affiliate links — Staxly may earn a commission if you sign up through them, at no extra cost to you. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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