Firecrawl alternatives (2026)
Firecrawl is a research tool: Turns websites into clean, LLM-ready data for agents. Pricing, as the maker states it: Open source + paid cloud. Its GitHub repo has 195,163 stars. We found 48 tools in the directory that do overlapping work (scraping websites, research); 29 of them are open source and 12 list a free or freemium plan. Below are the 10 closest, ranked by how many tasks and sub-tasks they share with Firecrawl, then by GitHub stars.
Updated
Quick answer: the top picks on this list, ranked by GitHub stars and listing maturity, are Tavily, Agent-Reach and Deer Flow, out of 11 tools listed below. At a glance: 10 open-source, 11 free or freemium and 9 local or self-hosted across 11 link-checked tools (last verified ).
Verified on : every tool link on this page was checked by our daily link check. No paid placements.
Ranked comparison (top 10)
| # | Tool | Pricing | Best for | Open source | Runs locally | GitHub stars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Tavily | Freemium | research the web, monitor & evaluate agents | No | ||
| 2 |  Agent-Reach | Open source | build an agent, research the web | Yes | Self-hosted | 102,190 |
| 3 |  Deer Flow | Open source | write code, build an agent | Yes | Self-hosted | 84,403 |
| 4 |  Vane | Open source | research the web | Yes | Self-hosted | 37,723 |
| 5 |  STORM | Open source | research the web | Yes | Self-hosted | 31,690 |
| 6 |  GPT Researcher | Open source | write code, research the web | Yes | Self-hosted | 30,286 |
| 7 |  DB-GPT | Open source | research the web | Yes | Self-hosted | 20,191 |
| 8 |  WrenAI | Open source + cloud | research the web | Yes | Self-hosted | 17,967 |
| 9 |  SurfSense | Open source | research the web | Yes | 16,601 | |
| 10 |  Feynman | Open source | write code, research the web | Yes | Self-hosted | 10,019 |
- Tavily (Freemium): Search and extraction API tuned for agents. Consider it because it does the same job with a different approach (freemium).
- Agent-Reach (Open source): Lets an AI agent read and search sites like X, Reddit, YouTube and GitHub through one toolkit, without paid APIs. Consider it because it also covers agent frameworks and SDKs.
- Deer Flow (Open source): ByteDance's open-source long-horizon agent harness that researches, codes and creates using sandboxes, memory and sub-agents. Consider it because it also covers memory and research and reports.
- Vane (Open source): Open-source AI answering engine that searches the web and replies with sources, self-hostable. Consider it because it is ready to use without building anything.
- STORM (Open source): Stanford system that writes Wikipedia-style articles from web research. Consider it because it also covers research and reports.
- GPT Researcher (Open source): Autonomous agent that researches the web and writes cited reports. Consider it because it also covers research and reports.
- DB-GPT (Open source): Open-source agentic data assistant for querying and analyzing data with LLMs. Consider it because it does the same job with a different approach (open source).
- WrenAI (Open source + cloud): Generative BI for agents: governed text-to-SQL with a semantic context layer. Consider it because it also covers codebase context and code search and SQL and databases.
- SurfSense (Open source): Privacy-focused, open-source NotebookLM alternative with a research agent over your sources. Consider it because it is ready to use without building anything; it also covers notebooks and research and reports.
- Feynman (Open source): Open-source research agent that searches, reads papers and writes cited reports. Consider it because it also covers research and reports.
Firecrawl vs alternatives at a glance
| Tool | Pricing | Open source / licence | GitHub stars | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Firecrawl | Open source + cloud | GNU AGPL v3.0 | 195,163 | scraping websites, research |
| Tavily | Freemium | No | — | research, evaluating agents |
| Agent-Reach | Open source | MIT | 102,190 | building AI agents, research |
| Deer Flow | Open source | MIT | 84,403 | writing code, building AI agents |
| Vane | Open source | MIT | 37,723 | research |
| STORM | Open source | MIT | 31,690 | research |
| GPT Researcher | Open source | Apache License 2.0 | 30,286 | writing code, research |
| DB-GPT | Open source | MIT | 20,191 | research, open-source agents |
| WrenAI | Open source + cloud | Apache-2.0 for code; CC BY 4.0 for docs | 17,967 | research, data analysis |
| SurfSense | Open source | Apache-2.0 | 16,601 | research, data analysis |
| Feynman | Open source | MIT | 10,019 | writing code, research |
More: Firecrawl listing · All research tools · All alternatives pages
Related searches: Open-source AI research agents · Free AI research agents
Alternatives are picked from directory data only: same category plus shared tasks and sub-tasks. Pricing is as each maker states it; GitHub stars as recorded on each listing.