switch402

Firecrawl Credits Expired? Pay per Page Instead of Losing Unused Credits

On Firecrawl's Hobby, Standard and Growth plans, unused monthly credits do not roll over, and pay-as-you-go credits you bought expire if you cancel the subscription (per Firecrawl's pricing page, checked Oct 30, 2026). switch402 needs no subscription or credit balance: each successful page costs $0.008 USDC on Base, paid per call over x402, so there is nothing to expire. Optional prepaid credits are there if you want them, and nothing expires: leftover balance stays on your key.

  • What Firecrawl says

    Credits roll over only on Scale (for one month) and Enterprise. Hobby, Standard and Growth credits reset each month. Pay-as-you-go top-ups need a paid plan and expire if you cancel.

  • What switch402 does instead

    No subscription required. Every call is paid on its own and settled only if content comes back. Optional prepaid packs and a $10 monthly lite plan are available, and nothing expires: leftover balance stays on your key.

  • Same core job

    Public page in, markdown out. Swap a single-page scrape call for POST /v1/scrape with {"url": "..."}.

  • What it does not replace

    switch402 offers scrape, scrape lite, screenshot, full-page screenshot, web search, site map, page metadata and PDF to text, each paid per call. Firecrawl also offers crawl jobs, JSON extraction and browser interaction; switch402 does not.

Firecrawl plans: what you pay per page actually used (monthly billing)

Firecrawl planPrice per monthBasic pages includedCost per page used if you scrape 1,000 pages
Hobby$195,000$0.019
Standard$99100,000$0.099
Growth$399500,000$0.399
Scale$7491,000,000$0.749

Cost per page actually used = plan price / pages you scrape that month; the plan price is the same whatever you use. On switch402 it is $0.008 per successful page at any volume, and a month with no calls costs $0.

Sources, checked Oct 30, 2026: firecrawl.dev/pricing. Prices can change; check the source before you decide.

Example: 1,500 pages in a month on Hobby still costs $19, about $0.0127 per page used. The same 1,500 pages on switch402 cost $12, and a quiet month of 300 pages costs $2.40.

Code example

Before: Firecrawl scrape (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"]}'
# markdown is in data.markdown

After: switch402, paid per call (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', {
  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() // markdown is top-level

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.
Do Firecrawl credits expire?
Per firecrawl.dev/pricing, checked Oct 30, 2026: monthly credits on Hobby, Standard and Growth do not roll over, while Scale carries unused credits over for one month. Pay-as-you-go credits you buy stay on the account until used, but expire if you cancel your subscription.
What do I pay per page I actually use?
Work out the cost per page you actually used: plan price / pages you scraped that month. Monthly credits on Hobby, Standard and Growth don't roll over, so unused credits still cost money. On switch402 every successful page is $0.008, so your cost per page used never changes and there are no unused credits. Firecrawl also runs crawl jobs and extracts JSON, which switch402 does not. Site maps and web search are on switch402 too, at $0.001 and $0.008 per call.
Can I move my Firecrawl scrape calls?
Yes, for single-page markdown scrapes. The API docs page has before-and-after curl, JavaScript and Python snippets. Map and search calls move too: switch402 has /v1/map ($0.001 per call) and /v1/search ($0.008 per call). Crawl jobs and JSON extraction have no switch402 equivalent.
Where do the Firecrawl numbers come from?
Firecrawl's public pricing page, checked Oct 30, 2026: monthly-billing plan prices and included credits, at 1 credit per basic scraped page.

Next steps