Apify vs Firecrawl vs fastCRW: Feature Scope (2026)

By the fastCRW team · Features and endpoint surface verified 2026-05-18 · fastCRW launch pricing expires 2026-06-01 · Verify independently before buying.

Disclosure: we build fastCRW. This is a vendor-authored comparison, so weight it accordingly — but we have kept the Apify and Firecrawl wins explicit, including a dedicated section on where each genuinely beats us, because a feature comparison that hides the gaps is not useful to you.

Apify vs Firecrawl vs fastCRW: three philosophies, not three clones

If you are comparing Apify, Firecrawl, and fastCRW on features, the first thing to internalize is that they are not the same kind of product. They sit at three different altitudes. Apify is a platform — a marketplace of prebuilt scrapers plus a compute layer to run them. Firecrawl is a broad managed API — a wide surface of endpoints for AI web data. fastCRW is a focused primitive — a single Firecrawl-compatible Rust binary that does scrape, crawl, map, and search and intentionally stops there. Matching the tool to your use case matters more than counting endpoints, so this guide is organized around scope, not a checkbox race.

Apify: an Actor marketplace and compute platform

Apify's defining feature is the Actor marketplace: thousands of prebuilt, community- and vendor-published scrapers for specific sites and tasks (e-commerce listings, social profiles, SERPs, maps). You are not just buying an API — you are renting a runtime that schedules, scales, and stores the output of those Actors, plus the Crawlee SDK to build your own. The breadth is the point. If a maintained Actor already exists for your exact target, that is genuine leverage no generic API gives you.

Firecrawl: a broad managed API surface

Firecrawl is the category reference for AI-oriented web data. Its surface is wide: scrape, crawl, map, search, extract, plus cloud-only specialties like agentic and deep-research endpoints, page interaction, and screenshot capture. It defines the request and response shapes that the rest of the ecosystem (fastCRW included) implements against. You trade self-host weight for a managed surface that covers most jobs without you assembling anything.

fastCRW: a focused Firecrawl-compatible primitive

fastCRW deliberately implements the overlap surface that most pipelines actually use — /v1/scrape, /v1/crawl, /v1/map, /v1/search — as a single statically-linked Rust binary (roughly an 8 MB Docker image, one container) under AGPL-3.0. The API is Firecrawl-compatible, so switching is a base-URL swap. The thesis is narrow and honest: a lean primitive you can own and self-host beats feature-stacking you cannot. See Firecrawl vs fastCRW for the 1:1 version of this argument and Apify vs fastCRW for the platform angle.

Core endpoint scope side by side

Here is the honest feature surface. Note the asymmetry: Apify's "endpoints" are really Actors and a run API; the scrape/crawl semantics live inside whichever Actor you pick. Firecrawl and fastCRW expose named REST endpoints directly.

Scrape, crawl, map, search across all three

All three can scrape one page, crawl a site, enumerate URLs, and run a web search — the difference is how. On fastCRW these are four named POST endpoints with a consistent request shape. On Firecrawl they are the same four (plus more) under the API it pioneered. On Apify each is an Actor you select, configure, and run; the platform then schedules and stores the result. For a developer who wants "give me clean content for these URLs," the named-endpoint model is less to assemble; for "scrape this specific awkward site that already has a maintained Actor," Apify's marketplace can be the shortest path.

LLM extraction: formats json plus jsonSchema

fastCRW does structured extraction by passing formats: ["json"] with a jsonSchema to /v1/scrape — a request costs 5 credits and returns typed output. The managed cloud also exposes /v1/extract as a 5-credit convenience wrapper over that same path; self-hosters call /v1/scrape directly. One honest constraint: fastCRW's LLM-based JSON extraction is a managed feature available on paid plans (as is the managed search answer mode, which uses a managed LLM); the FREE plan has no LLM features. Firecrawl's extract surface is broader and managed; Apify's extraction quality depends entirely on the Actor you chose.

Where the endpoint shapes line up

Because fastCRW targets Firecrawl's request/response shapes, a client written for Firecrawl's scrape/crawl/map/search usually works against fastCRW after a base-URL swap. That is the compatibility wedge: you are not learning a third API. The caveat is that response field names and error envelopes have minor divergence, and Firecrawl's cloud-only specialties have no fastCRW equivalent. Validate the short known list before cutover — details in Firecrawl API compatibility.

What fastCRW deliberately does not have

This is the section most vendor comparisons skip. fastCRW trades breadth for focus on purpose, and the gaps are real, not roadmap hand-waving. State them plainly so you can rule fastCRW out fast if you need any of them.

No /v1/agent, /v1/deep-research, or batch /v1/extract

fastCRW has no agentic endpoint (Firecrawl's Spark-style /v1/agent), no managed /v1/deep-research, and no multi-URL batched /v1/extract. Extraction is single-URL: for many URLs you iterate /v1/scrape concurrently or run a /v1/crawl. If your pipeline depends on a turnkey research loop or a one-call batch-extract, Firecrawl Cloud has those and fastCRW does not. You can compose a research loop yourself on the search-plus-scrape primitives, but you own the orchestration.

No screenshot output (HTTP 422)

A request for formats: ["screenshot"] returns HTTP 422 on fastCRW — screenshot output is simply not implemented. Firecrawl and several Apify Actors capture screenshots; if visual capture is part of your job, that alone disqualifies fastCRW today. We would rather you learn that here than after migrating.

No Actor marketplace of prebuilt scrapers

fastCRW is one engine, not a catalog. There is no marketplace of site-specific prebuilt scrapers, no community Actor store, no per-Actor pricing. You point the engine at a URL and it scrapes; there is no "someone already solved this exact site" shortcut. For long-tail awkward targets, Apify's marketplace is a feature fastCRW structurally cannot match.

The open-core advantage in feature terms

Where fastCRW's narrow surface turns into an actual advantage is ownership. The features it does have are not gated, metered behind a marketplace, or locked to a hosted plan.

Self-host the whole engine, no feature gating by tier

fastCRW ships as one static Rust binary — roughly an 8 MB Docker image in one container (plus an optional sidecar), versus Firecrawl's multi-service self-host stack measured in the ~2–3 GB range across five containers. Crucially, every endpoint works on every deployment: there is no "this feature is Cloud-only" tier wall on the open-core surface, and self-hosting the AGPL-3.0 engine costs $0 in license — you pay only for your own server. Apify's Crawlee SDK is open source, but the scheduling/marketplace platform that gives Apify its value is closed and hosted.

Drop-in after a base-URL swap from Firecrawl

Because the API is Firecrawl-compatible, the feature surface you adopt is reversible. Write your client against the shared scrape/crawl/map/search shape and the choice of backend becomes a runtime config value rather than a rewrite. That portability is itself a feature: you are not locked into one vendor's endpoint dialect. Compare that to migrating off an Apify Actor, where your integration is shaped around one Actor's specific input/output contract.

Where Apify and Firecrawl genuinely win

An honest scope comparison has to concede the ground these tools own outright:

• Apify — the Actor marketplace. If a maintained, battle-tested Actor already exists for your exact target site, you get a working scraper in minutes with anti-bot handling someone else maintains. fastCRW has no equivalent catalog. This is Apify's real moat.
• Apify — managed compute and scheduling. Apify runs, scales, retries, and stores your jobs as a platform. fastCRW is a stateless engine per request; you supply your own orchestration.
• Firecrawl — breadth of managed endpoints. Agentic, deep-research, batch extract, page interaction, and screenshot capture are real Firecrawl-cloud features with no fastCRW counterpart. If you depend on those, stay.
• Firecrawl — ecosystem and maturity. More tutorials, more community examples, more social proof. fastCRW wins on substitution and economics, not on being the default name.

Picking by scope, not by logo

The decision falls out of how much surface you actually need.

When Apify's marketplace is the right answer

Choose Apify when your work is dominated by specific awkward targets that already have maintained Actors, when you want a managed compute platform to schedule and store runs, or when "buy a prebuilt scraper" beats "build and own a generic one." The marketplace is leverage you cannot reproduce with a primitive. See Apify alternatives for the wider landscape.

When Firecrawl's breadth wins

Choose Firecrawl when you want the broadest single-vendor managed surface, depend on cloud-only specialties (agent, deep-research, batch extract, screenshots), and cost or data residency is not the binding constraint. It is the safe default for "I want one API that does almost everything, hosted."

When a lean primitive is enough

Choose fastCRW when scrape/crawl/map/search is the actual job, you want a hard cost ceiling via self-host, you need scraped content and target URLs to stay on your own infrastructure, or you want a Firecrawl-compatible escape hatch that keeps the decision reversible. The honest version: if you need screenshots, batch extract, an agent runtime, or a prebuilt-scraper marketplace, fastCRW is the wrong tool — and we would rather tell you that than sell you a migration you will regret.

Sources

• fastCRW endpoint surface, footprint, and honest gaps: github.com/us/crw (open-core README) · canonical fact sheet verified 2026-05-18
• Firecrawl features and docs: docs.firecrawl.dev (verified 2026-05-18)
• Apify platform and Actor marketplace: apify.com (verified 2026-05-18)

Related: Firecrawl vs fastCRW · Apify vs fastCRW · Firecrawl API compatibility · Apify alternatives