| Compared on | Kaer | Firecrawl |
|---|---|---|
| Price per 1,000 | Web $0.50, fast $1, deep $3 per 1,000 queries, prepaid, no monthly minimum (kaer.ai/search). | Search costs 2 credits per 10 results. Billed yearly, Hobby is $16 a month for 2,500 searches and Scale $599 a month for 500,000. firecrawl.dev/pricing |
| How you pay | Prepaid credit, no subscription and no monthly minimum. | Monthly plans with a credit allowance; extra credits in $5 increments on paid plans. firecrawl.dev/pricing |
| What comes back | Ranked results with signals: the deep lane adds freshness, an authority score and flags for likely paywalls and pages that need JavaScript. No page bodies. | Results “each with full-page markdown already included”. firecrawl.dev |
| Free to start | $10 of free credit for models, search and maps, valid 90 days (api.kaer.ai). | 1,000 credits every month (500 searches), no card. firecrawl.dev/pricing |
| Rate limit | Per key, rising with the account (api.kaer.ai/pricing). | Search: 10 a minute on Free, up to 10,000 a minute on Scale. firecrawl.dev/pricing |
| Open source | No. Kaer's index and API are hosted. | “It's also open source.” firecrawl.dev |
Pick Firecrawl if
- You need the page content, as markdown, in the same call as the search.
- You also crawl and scrape whole sites.
- You want to self-host: Firecrawl is open source.
Pick Kaer if
- You need ranked results, not page bodies, at $0.50 to $3 per 1,000 queries with no subscription.
- Latency matters: the web lane answers in ~80 ms.
- You want a provider that runs its own index: the web lane answers from Kaer's index alone.
Kaer Search API vs Firecrawl: common questions
Is the Kaer Search API a Firecrawl alternative?
For search alone, yes. For scraping and crawling, no: Kaer's search returns ranked results and signals, not page content. Many agents pair a search API with a fetch step; Firecrawl does both in one call.
Which is cheaper for search?
Kaer bills $0.50, $1 or $3 per 1,000 queries, prepaid. Firecrawl's search costs 2 credits per 10 results within a monthly plan: $16 a month for 2,500 searches on Hobby and $599 for 500,000 on Scale, billed yearly (Firecrawl's pricing, read 3 October 2026). Firecrawl's price includes page markdown; Kaer's does not.