CaptureWeb vs Firecrawl

Firecrawl is a strong markdown and scraping API. CaptureWeb does that plus screenshots, HTML-to-PDF, accessibility audits, and link checking. One API key, no credit multipliers.

What Firecrawl does well

Firecrawl built a clean developer experience for turning URLs into markdown. The /v1/crawl endpoint handles multi-page crawls with configurable depth. The JSON extraction mode, which uses an LLM to pull structured data from unstructured pages, works well for AI pipelines.

If your only job is getting clean text from web pages for a RAG pipeline, Firecrawl is a reasonable choice. The free tier (1,000 credits/month) is enough to prototype.

Where Firecrawl falls short

Firecrawl has no endpoint to render a page to PNG, JPEG, or WebP. If you need screenshots alongside markdown (archiving, OG image generation, visual regression testing, reports), you are paying a second vendor.

Firecrawl can parse an existing PDF but cannot render HTML to PDF. Invoice generation, compliance snapshots, and export workflows all need that, which pushes teams to a second vendor.

Credits do not roll over. A light month means wasted spend. CaptureWeb carries unused credits forward up to 2x your monthly cap.

Pricing comparison

API comparison: same task, two approaches

Firecrawl requires separate API calls for each output format. CaptureWeb's /v1/snapshotreturns screenshot, markdown, PDF, and raw HTML in one request.

Getting markdown from a URL

cURLJavaScriptPython

cURL

Copy

# Firecrawl (markdown only)
curl -X POST https://api.firecrawl.dev/v1/scrape \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $FIRECRAWL_KEY" \
  -d '{"url":"https://example.com","formats":["markdown"]}'
# CaptureWeb (screenshot + markdown + PDF, one call)
curl -X POST https://api.captureweb.dev/v1/snapshot \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CW_KEY" \
  -d '{"url":"https://example.com"}'
# Returns: { screenshot, markdown, pdf, html }  (costs 2 credits)

JavaScript

Copy

// Firecrawl (markdown only)
const fc = await fetch('https://api.firecrawl.dev/v1/scrape', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.FIRECRAWL_KEY}` },
  body: JSON.stringify({ url, formats: ['markdown'] }),
})
// CaptureWeb (screenshot + markdown + PDF, one call)
const cw = await fetch('https://api.captureweb.dev/v1/snapshot', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.CW_KEY}` },
  body: JSON.stringify({ url }),
})
// Returns: { screenshot, markdown, pdf, html }  (costs 2 credits)

Python

Copy

import httpx, os
# Firecrawl (markdown only)
fc = httpx.post(
    "https://api.firecrawl.dev/v1/scrape",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['FIRECRAWL_KEY']}"},
    json={"url": url, "formats": ["markdown"]},
)
# CaptureWeb (screenshot + markdown + PDF, one call)
cw = httpx.post(
    "https://api.captureweb.dev/v1/snapshot",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['CW_KEY']}"},
    json={"url": url},
)
# Returns: screenshot, markdown, pdf, html  (costs 2 credits)

Migrating from Firecrawl to CaptureWeb

The scraping and markdown endpoints follow the same REST pattern. Swap the base URL and API key. Most teams are done in under an hour.

1

Get your free API key

Sign up and get 100 free credits. No credit card required.

Get API key

2

Swap the base URL and key

Replace api.firecrawl.dev with api.captureweb.dev and swap FIRECRAWL_KEY for CW_KEY. Response shape is compatible for /v1/scrape and /v1/crawl.

3

Add screenshots and PDFs

Same auth header, two new endpoints unavailable in Firecrawl.

New endpoints

# Screenshot
curl -X POST https://api.captureweb.dev/v1/screenshot \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CW_KEY" \
  -d '{"url":"https://example.com","format":"webp"}' -o shot.webp

# PDF
curl -X POST https://api.captureweb.dev/v1/pdf \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CW_KEY" \
  -d '{"url":"https://example.com"}' -o page.pdf

4

You are live

Scrape and crawl responses have the same shape. Screenshot and PDF are new endpoints with no Firecrawl equivalent.

Copy migration prompt

1

Paste the prompt into your agent

The agent reads agents.md, gets your API key, and replaces Firecrawl calls with CaptureWeb equivalents.

2

Review and run

The agent will diff the changes. Approve and your first CaptureWeb request runs from the updated code.

Built for more than markdown