Open Source vs. Cloud: What You Get with Each | Firecrawl

Self Hosted Open Source

Firecrawl's core is open source under AGPL 3.0 with 83,000+ stars and 138+ contributors. You can self host using Docker Compose, but the self hosted version is missing several production critical features that are cloud only.

83K+

GitHub stars

One of the most popular open source web scraping projects, with 138+ contributors and active development.

Cloud only features

🔥

Fire EngineProprietary scraping engine with significantly higher success rates on complex, JavaScript heavy websites.

🛡️

Stealth ProxiesRotating proxy infrastructure with anti bot bypass capabilities and enhanced mode for difficult sites.

🖱️

ActionsClick, scroll, type, and interact with pages before extraction. Essential for dynamic content behind interactions.

📊

Dashboard and AnalyticsUsage tracking, credit management, and activity logs for monitoring your scraping operations.

🤖

FIRE-1 AgentAutonomous AI web crawling agent that searches, navigates, and extracts data without predefined URLs.

🌐

Browser SandboxManaged browser environments for AI agents with persistent CDP sessions and SOC II Type 2 compliance.

Self Hosted

Best for

Data residency, sensitive content, custom scraping logic

Scraping engine

Basic open source engine

Proxy support

BYO proxies only

FIRE-1 Agent and Browser Sandbox

Not available

Maintenance

You manage infrastructure, updates, and scaling

License concern

AGPL 3.0 (copyleft, derivative works must also be AGPL)

Cloud API

Best for

Production workloads, high reliability, full feature set

Scraping engine

Fire Engine (proprietary, higher success rates)

Proxy support

Built in rotating proxies with anti bot bypass

FIRE-1 Agent and Browser Sandbox

Fully supported

Maintenance

Fully managed, SOC II Type 2 certified

License concern

No license concern (consuming a service)

AGPL 3.0 licensing

The core repository uses AGPL 3.0, which requires derivative works to also be open sourced under AGPL 3.0 if distributed. The SDKs and some UI components use the more permissive MIT license. If AGPL is a concern for your use case, the cloud API avoids this issue entirely since you are consuming a service, not distributing the software.