switch402

Pay-as-You-Go Web Scraping API: $0.008 per Successful Page, No Plan or Account Required

Many pay-as-you-go scraping offers still sit on top of an account, a stored card or a monthly plan. switch402 is pay per call: an unpaid request gets HTTP 402 with the price, your code or agent pays $0.008 USDC on Base over x402, and the page comes back as markdown. You are charged only when content comes back.

  • No plan underneath

    A month with zero calls costs zero. No minimum spend. Prepaid packs and a $10 monthly lite plan are optional.

  • No account or stored card

    Each call is paid from a wallet over x402. No signup or API key is needed; an optional prepaid key is available.

  • Charged only on success

    Payment is settled only after a provider returns content. If every provider fails you get a 502 and pay nothing.

  • Free price check

    GET /v1/quote returns the price, the healthy-provider count and estimated latency at no cost.

Plan-based pay-as-you-go vs pay per call

ServicePay-as-you-go modelPaid plan required?Account required?
FirecrawlCredits added in $5 increments when the plan balance runs outYesYes
switch402$0.008 per successful call, paid per request over x402NoNo, a wallet pays

This table compares billing models. For your own cost at your volume, see the calculator: switch402 is $0.008 per successful page, with no plan minimum.

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

Cost: pages x $0.008. 250 pages in a month cost $2; 2,000 pages cost $16. Nothing is billed in a month you do not use it.

Code example

curl: free quote, then the unpaid call shows the price (HTTP 402)

curl -s 'https://api.switch402.com/v1/quote?url=https://example.com' -H 'User-Agent: my-agent/1.0'

curl -i -G https://api.switch402.com/v1/scrape \
  -H 'User-Agent: my-agent/1.0' \
  --data-urlencode 'url=https://example.com'
# HTTP 402 with x402 payment terms; an x402 client pays and retries.

JavaScript: pay per page

// 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 { title, markdown } = await res.json()

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.
How is this different from a scraping plan?
You pay only for the pages you actually scrape, $0.008 each and charged only on success, with no plan minimum and no unused credits. A plan bills its price whatever you use; for example, Firecrawl's Hobby plan is $19 a month. The calculators show each plan's minimum and what its unused credits cost at your volume. Full-featured scraping APIs add things like CAPTCHA solving and full browser rendering. switch402's difference is no account, API key, stored card or deposit: an agent can pay per call by itself.
Do I need a plan before pay-as-you-go starts?
Not on switch402. On Firecrawl, per its pricing page (checked Oct 30, 2026), pay-as-you-go is available on paid plans only.
What do I get back?
JSON with url, title, markdown, own_service, ms and attempts. own_service is true if the result came from a fallback service we operate.
What does switch402 not do?
Each call does one job: a public page to markdown, a site map, page metadata, a screenshot, a web search or a PDF to text. It does not crawl whole sites, solve logins or extract custom JSON fields.

Next steps