Yes. POST https://api.switch402.com/v1/scrape with {"url": "..."} returns the page as markdown for $0.008 USDC on Base per call, paid over x402 and charged only on success. A lower-cost endpoint, /v1/scrape/lite, is $0.003 per call.

What is the cheapest Firecrawl alternative?

It depends on volume. Checked Nov 9, 2026, for basic pages as text: at 1,000 pages a month Firecrawl's own free plan, Exa, Tavily and ScraperAPI's free plan all cost $0; at 10,000 pages Exa Contents ($10, covered by its $10 monthly free credit) and Tavily Extract ($8) cost least; at 100,000 pages ScraperAPI Hobby ($49, standard pages) and ScrapingBee Freelance ($49, without JavaScript) are lowest, then Exa ($90) and Firecrawl Standard ($99).

Is switch402 cheaper than Firecrawl?

In a middle band, on lite. Firecrawl's free plan covers 1,000 basic pages a month for $0. From there, switch402 /v1/scrape/lite ($0.003 a page) costs less than Firecrawl Hobby with $5 top-ups (which add about $0.005 a page past 5,000 credits) until about 33,000 pages a month, where Firecrawl Standard ($99 for 100,000) becomes cheaper. /v1/scrape at $0.008 costs more than Firecrawl Hobby per page. switch402 also needs no account, API key or plan.

Which Firecrawl alternative has no subscription?

Exa is pay as you go with no subscription or minimum (prepaid credits). Tavily has pay as you go at $0.008 per credit with no plan. switch402 has no account at all: each call is paid in USDC on Base over x402. ScraperAPI and ScrapingBee sell monthly plans; ScraperAPI pay as you go starts on Scaling ($475).

Do these alternatives handle hard sites?

ScraperAPI charges more credits for hard sites (Google and Bing 25, LinkedIn 30, +10 behind bot protection), and ScrapingBee uses premium proxies at 10 or 25 credits and stealth at 75. switch402 reads public pages only, nothing behind a login; a page that does not come back costs nothing.

How much does Firecrawl cost?

Per firecrawl.dev/pricing, checked Nov 9, 2026, monthly billing: Free $0 (1,000 credits a month), Hobby $19 (5,000), Standard $99 (100,000), Growth $399 (500,000) and Scale $749 (1,000,000); billed annually $16, $83, $333 and $599 a month.

Where do these numbers come from?

Each vendor's own pricing page or pricing docs: firecrawl.dev/pricing, exa.ai/docs/pricing, Tavily's API credits docs, scraperapi.com/pricing, and ScrapingBee's pricing page and documentation, all checked Nov 9, 2026, plus switch402's live payment terms. Prices can change; check the sources before you decide.

Firecrawl Alternatives (2026): 6 Options Priced at 1K, 10K and 100K Pages

Looking for a Firecrawl alternative? Here is what turning web pages into usable text costs on Firecrawl and five alternatives, from each vendor's own pricing page, checked Nov 9, 2026. Firecrawl is free for 1,000 credits a month, then Hobby $19 for 5,000 credits, Standard $99 for 100,000 and Growth $399 for 500,000, with a basic page at 1 credit. Short answer: for plain page text, Exa Contents ($1 per 1,000 pages with $10 of free credit a month) and Tavily Extract (1 credit per 5 URLs) cost the least at low and mid volume; at 100,000 pages a month, ScraperAPI Hobby ($49 for standard pages) and ScrapingBee Freelance ($49 without JavaScript) are lowest, then Exa ($90) and Firecrawl Standard ($99). switch402 is not the cheapest per page at any of these volumes, though /v1/scrape/lite costs less than Firecrawl between about 1,000 and 33,000 pages a month. Its trade is different: no account, API key, plan or credits; your agent pays $0.008 per page ($0.003 on lite) in USDC over x402, only on success.

Exa Contents: $0.001 a page, no plan
Pay as you go, no subscription: $1 per 1,000 pages per content type (text, highlights or summary), and a $10 free balance that resets on the first of each month. Best when you already have the URLs; Exa Search is $4 to $7 per 1,000 searches on top.
Tavily Extract: cheapest for light use
Basic extract is 1 credit per 5 successful URLs, so the free 1,000 credits a month cover about 5,000 pages. Pay as you go is $0.008 per credit after that, or plans from Project $30 (4,000 credits). Failed extractions are not charged.
ScraperAPI: cheapest for big standard-page volume
Hobby $49 for 100,000 API credits, Startup $149 for 1,000,000. A standard page is 1 credit, but Amazon is 5, Google and Bing 25, LinkedIn 30, and bot-protected sites add 10. Credits reset at renewal; pay as you go only from Scaling ($475).
ScrapingBee: low plan price, 5 credits per default page
Hobby $19 for 75,000 credits, Freelance $49 for 250,000, Startup $99 for 1,000,000. JavaScript rendering is on by default at 5 credits a page (1 without it); premium proxies cost 10 or 25. Credits are valid for one month.
Firecrawl: one credit pool for scrape, crawl and search
Scrape and crawl 1 credit a page, search 2 credits per 10 results, JSON format +4 a page. Hobby, Standard and Growth credits do not roll over; pay-as-you-go top-ups in $5 steps need a paid plan.
switch402: no account, plan or credits
/v1/scrape $0.008 per page, /v1/scrape/lite $0.003, /v1/map $0.001, /v1/search $0.008. Paid per call in USDC on Base over x402, charged only on success, with failover between providers. Public pages only, nothing behind a login.

Monthly cost for basic pages as text (cheapest option that covers it), as of Nov 9, 2026

Pages a month	Firecrawl	Exa Contents	Tavily Extract (basic)	ScraperAPI (standard page)	ScrapingBee (default, JS on)	switch402
1,000	$0 (Free)	$0 ($1, inside the $10 free credit)	$0 (200 of the free 1,000 credits)	$0 (free plan, 1,000 credits)	$19 (Hobby)	$8 ($3 on lite)
10,000	$44 (Hobby $19 + 5 x $5 top-ups)	$0 ($10, inside the free credit)	$8 (free 1,000 + 1,000 credits x $0.008)	$49 (Hobby)	$19 (Hobby)	$80 ($30 on lite)
100,000	$99 (Standard)	$90 ($100 minus $10 free)	$140 (Bootstrap $100 + 5,000 x $0.008)	$49 (Hobby, exactly 100,000 credits)	$99 (Startup)	$800 ($300 on lite)
Monthly minimum past the free tier	$19	$0 (pay as you go)	$0 (pay as you go)	$49	$19	$0

Plan figures assume every credit is used; a plan you only half use costs twice as much per page. Firecrawl top-ups are 1,000 credits per $5 on Hobby. Tavily Extract bills per 5 successful URLs, so its figures assume batches of 5. ScrapingBee's 1,000 free credits are a one-time signup trial, not monthly; without JavaScript its pages are 1 credit (Hobby $19, Hobby $19 and Freelance $49 at the three volumes). Hard sites cost more on ScraperAPI and ScrapingBee (bot protection and premium proxies). Outputs also differ: check that each returns the format you need (HTML, markdown or text). Honest reading: switch402 costs the most per page here; it fits agents that cannot or should not hold an account, key or plan, and uneven months where a plan would go unused.

Sources, checked Nov 9, 2026: firecrawl.dev/pricing, exa.ai/docs/pricing, docs.tavily.com/documentation/api-credits, scraperapi.com/pricing, scrapingbee.com/pricing, scrapingbee.com/documentation. Prices can change; check the source before you decide.

Example: an agent reads 10,000 pages a month. Firecrawl Hobby with top-ups is $44 (or Standard $99). Exa Contents is $10 of text, covered by its monthly $10 free credit. Tavily Extract is 2,000 credits: the free 1,000 plus 1,000 x $0.008 = $8. ScrapingBee Hobby is $19, ScraperAPI Hobby $49. switch402 is $80, or $30 on /v1/scrape/lite, with no account or plan. If you can hold an API key and your volume is steady, a vendor plan or Exa pay as you go costs less.

Code example

Exa Contents, $1 per 1,000 pages (curl)

curl -s -X POST https://api.exa.ai/contents \
  -H "x-api-key: $EXA_API_KEY" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"urls": ["https://example.com"], "text": true}'

Firecrawl scrape, 1 credit per page (curl)

curl -s -X POST https://api.firecrawl.dev/v2/scrape \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $FIRECRAWL_API_KEY" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"url": "https://example.com", "formats": ["markdown"]}'

switch402 scrape lite, $0.003 per page, no key (JavaScript)

// npm i @x402/fetch @x402/evm viem
import { wrapFetchWithPaymentFromConfig } from '@x402/fetch'
import { ExactEvmScheme } from '@x402/evm'
import { privateKeyToAccount } from 'viem/accounts'

const account = privateKeyToAccount(process.env.AGENT_KEY)
const fetchWithPayment = wrapFetchWithPaymentFromConfig(fetch, {
  schemes: [{ network: 'eip155:8453', client: new ExactEvmScheme(account) }],
})

const res = await fetchWithPayment('https://api.switch402.com/v1/scrape/lite', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json', 'User-Agent': 'my-agent/1.0' },
  body: JSON.stringify({ url: 'https://example.com' }),
})
const { markdown } = await res.json() // $0.003, charged only on success

FAQ

Is switch402 live?: Yes. POST https://api.switch402.com/v1/scrape with {"url": "..."} returns the page as markdown for $0.008 USDC on Base per call, paid over x402 and charged only on success. A lower-cost endpoint, /v1/scrape/lite, is $0.003 per call.
What is the cheapest Firecrawl alternative?: It depends on volume. Checked Nov 9, 2026, for basic pages as text: at 1,000 pages a month Firecrawl's own free plan, Exa, Tavily and ScraperAPI's free plan all cost $0; at 10,000 pages Exa Contents ($10, covered by its $10 monthly free credit) and Tavily Extract ($8) cost least; at 100,000 pages ScraperAPI Hobby ($49, standard pages) and ScrapingBee Freelance ($49, without JavaScript) are lowest, then Exa ($90) and Firecrawl Standard ($99).
Is switch402 cheaper than Firecrawl?: In a middle band, on lite. Firecrawl's free plan covers 1,000 basic pages a month for $0. From there, switch402 /v1/scrape/lite ($0.003 a page) costs less than Firecrawl Hobby with $5 top-ups (which add about $0.005 a page past 5,000 credits) until about 33,000 pages a month, where Firecrawl Standard ($99 for 100,000) becomes cheaper. /v1/scrape at $0.008 costs more than Firecrawl Hobby per page. switch402 also needs no account, API key or plan.
Which Firecrawl alternative has no subscription?: Exa is pay as you go with no subscription or minimum (prepaid credits). Tavily has pay as you go at $0.008 per credit with no plan. switch402 has no account at all: each call is paid in USDC on Base over x402. ScraperAPI and ScrapingBee sell monthly plans; ScraperAPI pay as you go starts on Scaling ($475).
Do these alternatives handle hard sites?: ScraperAPI charges more credits for hard sites (Google and Bing 25, LinkedIn 30, +10 behind bot protection), and ScrapingBee uses premium proxies at 10 or 25 credits and stealth at 75. switch402 reads public pages only, nothing behind a login; a page that does not come back costs nothing.
How much does Firecrawl cost?: Per firecrawl.dev/pricing, checked Nov 9, 2026, monthly billing: Free $0 (1,000 credits a month), Hobby $19 (5,000), Standard $99 (100,000), Growth $399 (500,000) and Scale $749 (1,000,000); billed annually $16, $83, $333 and $599 a month.
Where do these numbers come from?: Each vendor's own pricing page or pricing docs: firecrawl.dev/pricing, exa.ai/docs/pricing, Tavily's API credits docs, scraperapi.com/pricing, and ScrapingBee's pricing page and documentation, all checked Nov 9, 2026, plus switch402's live payment terms. Prices can change; check the sources before you decide.