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.
Searlo vs Firecrawl for Search
| Feature | Searlo | Firecrawl |
|---|---|---|
| Search Cost per 1K | $0.30 | $2.00+ |
| Response Type | Structured JSON | Raw HTML/Markdown |
| Latency | ~300ms | 2-10s (crawl) |
| AI Overview Parsing | Built-in | Not available |
| MCP Protocol | Native | Community |
| TOON Format | Yes (60% fewer tokens) | No |
| Full Page Crawling | Search results only | Yes — full crawler |
| Free Tier | 3,000 credits | 500 credits |
| Credits Expire | Never | Monthly |
Bottom line: Use Firecrawl for full website crawling. Use Searlo for search results — it's faster, cheaper, and gives you structured data instantly.
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. It's great for extracting content from URLs. Searlo is a search API that returns structured Google SERP results (organic rankings, AI Overviews, snippets) without crawling individual pages.
When should I use Firecrawl vs Searlo?+
Use Firecrawl when you need to extract content from specific URLs (e.g., scrape a product page). Use Searlo when you need search results — what Google returns for a query. Many AI agent and RAG workflows use both: Searlo to find relevant URLs, then Firecrawl to extract their content.
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?+
Absolutely. A common pattern: (1) Use Searlo to search Google and get top URLs. (2) Use Firecrawl to extract full content from those URLs. This gives you search discovery + deep content extraction for RAG pipelines.