Crawl4AI
Free software · localConvert accessible web page content into Markdown for research, retrieval or agent context.
Free local library · own Python compute · hosted cloud and optional model APIs are separate
Web content extraction for agents
Convert accessible web page content into Markdown for research, retrieval or agent context.
Alternative to
Firecrawl ↗Tavily ↗
Exa ↗ScrapingBee ↗
Paid workflow replaced
Extract readable content from a known public page URL, instead of metered Firecrawl scrape, Tavily Extract, Exa Contents or ScrapingBee Markdown requests beyond their free allowances. Tavily and Exa already have recurring free plans. Covers the extraction step only: no web search, semantic index, deep research, managed proxy or browser interaction.
Before you switch
Source licence is Apache-2.0 with an additional attribution requirement; check the full licence. We tested HTTP-only extraction, not JavaScript rendering, crawling, browser interaction or LLM extraction. Supply your own compute; hosted cloud, proxies and optional LLM APIs have separate limits or costs. This product includes software developed by UncleCode (https://x.com/unclecode) as part of the Crawl4AI project (https://github.com/unclecode/crawl4ai).
What it does well
- Produce Markdown from accessible HTML without buying an extraction API.
- Use the HTTP strategy locally without a paid model or hosted browser.
Hands-on check · 17 Oct 2026
Crawl4AI 0.9.5 with Python 3.12.1 on macOS: AsyncHTTPCrawlerStrategy fetched quotes.toscrape.com with HTTP 200 and produced 4,375 characters of Markdown. Saved and reopened the Markdown and checked an extracted author. Fixed a local Python CA-bundle configuration error using certifi; TLS verification remained enabled. No browser, LLM key or paid API.
Official source ↗