The deciding difference is operational: Firecrawl can run on infrastructure you control, Brave Search API cannot. If that constraint is real for you, it settles the choice before anything else is considered.
Turns any site into clean markdown, including the JavaScript-heavy ones.
Independent web index with straightforward per-query pricing.
| Firecrawl | Brave Search API | |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | Open source | Proprietary |
| Pricing | freemium | freemium |
| Self-hostable | Yes | No |
| Languages | Python, TypeScript | Any language |
| Install | — | — |
| Keys required | FIRECRAWL_API_KEY | BRAVE_API_KEY |
The deciding difference is operational: Firecrawl can run on infrastructure you control, Brave Search API cannot. If that constraint is real for you, it settles the choice before anything else is considered. Firecrawl: Turns any site into clean markdown, including the JavaScript-heavy ones. Brave Search API: Independent web index with straightforward per-query pricing.
Firecrawl can run on your own infrastructure. Brave Search API is a hosted service only.
Firecrawl is open source (freemium). Brave Search API is proprietary (freemium).
Every page here answers to Accept: text/markdown and returns the same content at roughly a tenth the tokens. No separate site, no toggle — same URL.
curl -s -H "Accept: text/markdown" https://newagent.build/compare/firecrawl-vs-brave-search