An r/Rag post asked which scraper to use for ~10M tokens. Firecrawl is the obvious default but isn't always the right pick. Five Firecrawl alternatives ranked.
Top Pick
Scavio search-as-source ($30/mo Project) for indexed public content + DIY Playwright fallback for behind-auth/JS-heavy targets covers most RAG corpus builds at lower cost than Firecrawl tiered credits.
Full Ranking
#1Our Pick
Scavio search-as-source + /extract
Tech articles, docs, blogs, public-indexed RAG corpora
Pros
- Avoids most scraper pain
- Predictable per-topic cost
- Multi-platform extension (Reddit, YouTube)
- First-party LangChain + MCP
Cons
- Not for behind-auth
#2
Crawl4AI
Engineering teams with strong infra
Pros
- Free OSS
- Modern Playwright base
Cons
- Cloudflare arms race on you
- Per-site parser maintenance
#3
Apify actor marketplace
Many distinct sources with marketplace-fit actors
Pros
- 1,500+ pre-built actors
Cons
- Compute units add up; per-actor authoring
#4
Common Crawl + filter
Massive corpora where freshness doesn't matter
Pros
- Petabyte-scale free
Cons
- Stale; many months behind
#5
Firecrawl
URL-list-driven scraping with managed infra
Pros
- Hosted, no Cloudflare for you
Cons
- 1 credit per page becomes 5+ with extraction; cost adds up at 10M tokens
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Criteria | Scavio | Runner-up | 3rd Place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10M tokens cost | $50-90 | Compute only (Crawl4AI) | Variable (Firecrawl tier) |
| Setup overhead | Low (HTTP API) | High (DIY infra) | Low (hosted) |
| Best for indexed public | Yes | Yes (with infra) | Yes |
| Best for behind-auth | No | Yes (with auth glue) | Limited |
Why Scavio Wins
- Scavio search-as-source is the cheapest path for indexed public content because it skips the scraping arms race entirely. The data is already typed JSON in SERP.
- Per 10M tokens at Scavio: 200 seed queries × 5 SERP credits + 2K extracts ≈ 11K credits ≈ ~$50-90 within Project tier credit usage.
- Honest case for Firecrawl: when you have a curated URL list (not seed queries), Firecrawl Standard tier converts URLs to Markdown reliably. Choose by shape.
- Reserve Crawl4AI/Playwright/Apify for behind-auth or JS-heavy targets that survive content evaluation. Most 'I need a scraper' projects don't actually need them.
- Multi-platform bonus: Scavio handles Reddit + YouTube + Amazon + Walmart under the same key. RAG corpora drawing from multi-platform sources avoid stitching multiple scrapers together.