Mintlify vs Firecrawl
Beautiful docs + AI search — used by Anthropic, Cursor, Perplexity
vs. AI-native web scraping + crawling API — LLM-ready data extraction
Pricing tiers
Mintlify
Hobby
$0. 1 editor. Unlimited pages. Mintlify subdomain. Community support.
Free
Pro
$150/mo. Custom domain, analytics, versioning, 10 editors. Commercial use.
$150/mo
Growth
$550/mo. API playground, OpenAPI, 25 editors, advanced analytics, SSO.
$550/mo
Enterprise
Custom. Dedicated support, HIPAA, SAML, custom integrations, large teams.
Custom
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
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing hobby on Mintlify vs free on Firecrawl.
| Metric | Mintlify | Firecrawl |
|---|---|---|
| No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers. | ||
Features
Mintlify · 15 features
- AI Chat — User-facing AI assistant trained on your docs.
- AI Search — Semantic search across docs.
- Analytics — Page views, search queries, CTR.
- API Playground — Try API endpoints from docs (OpenAPI).
- Custom Domain — docs.yourco.com.
- Custom Theming — Logo, colors, fonts, branding.
- Git Sync — Build on push to GitHub/GitLab.
- i18n — Multi-language docs.
- MDX — Markdown + React components.
- Multi-version Docs — Support /v1, /v2, /v3 side-by-side.
- OpenAPI Generation — Auto-generate docs from spec.
- Pre-built Components — Cards, Callouts, Tabs, CodeGroups, Accordions.
- SEO Optimized — SSR + structured data.
- SSO — SAML + OIDC (Growth+).
- Syntax Highlighting — Shiki-based, 100+ languages.
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.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Mintlify | Firecrawl |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | mintlify CLI | Firecrawl CLI |
| SDK | — | firecrawl-go, firecrawl-js, firecrawl-py |
| REST | — | Firecrawl REST API |
| MCP | — | Firecrawl MCP Server |
| OTHER | AI Chat Widget, Analytics Dashboard, API Playground, MDX + mint.json, Mintlify Dashboard | — |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Some links to Mintlify and Firecrawl 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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