URL-to-markdown scraping APIs: subscription vs pay per call
Updated 2026-10-30 · listed A to Z, not ranked
Turning a web page into text for an AI agent or a RAG pipeline is usually bought one of two ways: a monthly credit plan on an account, or pay per call over x402 with no account at all. Here is one well-known plan-based service, Firecrawl, next to one x402 endpoint, with prices from Firecrawl’s official pricing page and the live payment terms of that endpoint. This is a short comparison, not a full market survey.
Disclosure: WebRead is built and operated by the youraitools.co team, and its payments go to our own wallet. Rows are listed A to Z. We do not pick a winner.
- Price
- Hobby $19/month for 5,000 credits; Standard $99/month for 100,000
- Billing model
- Monthly credit plan; pay-as-you-go top-ups in $5 steps on paid plans only
- Free allowance
- 1,000 credits per month
- Account or key
- Account and API key
- Notes
- 1 credit per basic page; credits do not roll over on Hobby, Standard or Growth; also crawl, map, search and JSON extraction
- Price
- $0.002 per full read; $0.001 per lite read (first 8,000 characters)
- Billing model
- Pay per call over x402, USDC on Base, Polygon, Arbitrum One or Solana
- Free allowance
- Free preview (first 2,000 characters)
- Account or key
- None: a wallet pays per call
- Notes
- Single service, not a router; only successful reads are charged; markdown output
How we checked: Firecrawl prices and terms are quoted from firecrawl.dev/pricing (monthly billing) on Oct 30, 2026. WebRead prices come from the HTTP 402 payment terms of its live endpoint, probed without paying on Oct 30, 2026. Prices change, so check each source before you decide.
How they differ
- Plan vs pay per use. Firecrawl sells monthly credits that reset on Hobby, Standard and Growth, with pay-as-you-go top-ups on paid plans only. WebRead has no account: each call is paid on its own over x402.
- Price per request. Used fully, Firecrawl Hobby ($19 for 5,000 credits) works out to about $0.0038 per basic page and Standard ($99 for 100,000) to about $0.001, against WebRead’s $0.002 per full read. Firecrawl’s free 1,000 credits a month cost nothing. Other account-based scraping APIs not listed here can also cost less per request.
- Scope. Firecrawl also crawls, maps, searches and extracts JSON. WebRead turns one public page into markdown per call.
Work out your own cost
Divide a plan’s monthly price by the pages you will really use: credits that reset unused raise your real cost per page. For more x402 scraping endpoints from other builders, see search and web data APIs you can pay per call.
Sources (official pages, read 2026-10-30)
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