Searlo

Firecrawl Alternative for Search

Search Without the Scraping Complexity

Firecrawl excels at web scraping, but for search results you don't need a crawler. Searlo gives you structured Google SERP data instantly — no HTML parsing, no crawl delays, no infrastructure management.

Try Free — 3,000 CreditsDocumentation
GET/api/v1/search/web?q=postgres+connection+pooling&num=3
200 OK0.17s1 credit85,000 results
{  "searchTime": 0.17,  "totalResults": 85000,  "page": 1,  "organic": [    {      "position": 1,      "title": "31.10. Connection Pools and Data Sources",      "link": "www.postgresql.org/docs/…",      "domain": "postgresql.org",      "snippet": "For an environment without an application se…"    },    { "position": 2, "domain": "medium.com", … },    { "position": 3, "domain": "stackoverflow.blog", … }  ],  "credits": 1}

Searlo vs Firecrawl for Search

Searlo vs Firecrawl for Search
FeatureSearloFirecrawl
Search Cost per 1K$0.30Not a flat rate — 2 credits/10 results
Response TypeStructured JSONRaw HTML/Markdown
Latency~300ms2-10s (crawl)
MCP ProtocolNativeOfficial
TOON FormatYes (63% fewer tokens)No
Full Page CrawlingYes — /scrape, /crawl, /map, /extractYes — full crawler
Free Tier3,000 credits500 credits
Credit Validity90d new / legacy unlimitedMonthly

Bottom line: for search results, Searlo is faster, cheaper, and gives you structured data instantly. And Searlo now scrapes and crawls arbitrary sites directly too — see below for what that actually costs against Firecrawl's own published rates.

Searlo also scrapes and crawls — here's what that actually costs

Firecrawl's own pricing runs from $3.20 per 1,000 pages on the annual Hobby plan down to $0.599 per 1,000 on the $599/month Scale plan for a basic scrape, crawl or map call. Asking for a JSON-formatted response instead of plain markdown costs +4 credits per page on top of that — a 5x surcharge Firecrawl states directly on its own pricing page.

Searlo charges one flat credit per /scrape, /map or /crawl call and one credit per successfully-fetched /extract URL — $0.30 per 1,000 at the Scale credit pack, the same rate whether the page needed a browser render or not, and the same rate for any output format. There is no separate JSON surcharge and no monthly subscription: credits are a one-time purchase.

  • Firecrawl: $3.20/1K (Hobby) to $0.599/1K (Scale, $599/mo); +4 credits/page (5x) for JSON/Question/Highlight formats
  • Searlo: $0.30/1K flat, one-time credit packs, no format surcharge
  • Firecrawl free tier: 1,000 credits/month, recurring; Searlo: 3,000 credits, one-time, no card

Scrape a page directly

The call the FAQ below used to say Searlo couldn't make:

curl -X POST "https://api.searlo.tech/api/v1/scrape" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "url": "https://example.com/blog/how-we-ship",
    "formats": ["markdown", "links", "tables"],
    "onlyMainContent": true
  }'
import requests

r = requests.post(
    "https://api.searlo.tech/api/v1/scrape",
    headers={"x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY"},
    json={
        "url": "https://example.com/blog/how-we-ship",
        "formats": ["markdown", "links", "tables"],
        "onlyMainContent": True,
    },
)
page = r.json()
print(page["metadata"]["title"])
print(page["markdown"][:500])
print(len(page["links"]), "links found")
const res = await fetch("https://api.searlo.tech/api/v1/scrape", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    "x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY",
    "content-type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    url: "https://example.com/blog/how-we-ship",
    formats: ["markdown", "links", "tables"],
    onlyMainContent: true,
  }),
});
const page = await res.json();
console.log(page.metadata.title);
console.log(page.markdown.slice(0, 500));
console.log(page.links.length, "links found");

Related

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Features

Ready to Try Searlo?

3,000 free credits. No credit card required.

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Firecrawl a search API?

No. Firecrawl is a web crawling/scraping tool that fetches and parses full web pages into markdown. Searlo covers both halves: a Google SERP API (organic rankings, titles, snippets) and, on the same key, a scrape/crawl/map/extract API for arbitrary pages — POST /scrape, /crawl, /map and /extract.

Can Searlo scrape any website?

Yes. POST /scrape returns any URL as markdown, plain text, raw HTML, links, images, headings, tables and the page's own JSON-LD, rendering with a real browser automatically when the page needs it. POST /crawl walks a whole site as a background job, POST /map lists a site's published URLs, and POST /extract turns a field schema into structured records. Every one of those bills a flat 1 credit per call — the same rate whether or not the page needed rendering.

When should I use Firecrawl vs Searlo?

For search results specifically, Searlo is the faster and cheaper option — $0.30 per 1,000 queries versus crawling Google yourself, which its terms of service prohibit. For scraping and crawling arbitrary pages, both now cover the same ground: Firecrawl's rates run $3.20/1,000 (Hobby) down to $0.599/1,000 (Scale) with a +4-credit surcharge for JSON-formatted output; Searlo is a flat $0.30/1,000 with no format surcharge. Many teams use Searlo for both halves — search discovery and page scraping — under one key.

Is Searlo cheaper than Firecrawl for search?

Yes. Searlo costs $0.30 per 1,000 queries and returns structured SERP data in ~300ms. Using Firecrawl to search would require crawling Google (against ToS) or crawling many pages to simulate search, at $2+ per 1,000 pages and 2-10 seconds per request.

Can I use Searlo and Firecrawl together?

You can, though at this point it's mostly redundant for scraping specifically: Searlo's own /scrape and /crawl now cover the same ground Firecrawl does, at a flat rate with no per-format surcharge. The pattern that still makes sense is (1) Searlo to search Google and get top URLs, (2) Searlo's own /scrape or /search-and-scrape to fetch their content in the same call — one key, one bill, for both search discovery and page content.

From the team behind Searlo

We also build RenderKit — the browser-rendering API for screenshots, PDFs, and LLM-ready markdown. Same billing model, same developer-first API design.

URL to Markdown APITurn any page into clean, LLM-ready markdown in one call.Website Screenshot APIFull-page and element captures without a Puppeteer fleet.RenderKit vs FirecrawlMarkdown extraction compared, feature by feature.Token-aware chunkingSplitting scraped pages so embeddings stay coherent.

Explore the full RenderKit API →

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