JigsawStack vs Firecrawl - AI Web Scraping
26 May 2025
One of the most requested comparisons has been putting JigsawStack AI Web Scraper against Firecrawl.
Before we jump into the tests we ran, we need to understand what makes a good web scraper or even what’s web scraping in the first place.
Traditionally, developers wrote large, complex codebases on top of heavy infrastructure to load and extract content from websites. They used browser engines like Puppeteer, Playwright, or Selenium, followed by CSS selectors and various techniques to get the data they needed.
Today, we have AI scrapers that do the same thing in seconds, fully managed and automated through simple prompting.
So what makes a good AI Web scraper?
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Extracts data with the accuracy of a developer-written script
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Automatically handles errors, browser crashes, popups, and other blockers
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Auto unblocker for websites protected by Cloudflare, Captcha, and more
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Fully managed scaling from 1 to 10,000 requests and back in seconds
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Smart actions such as auto-scrolling to load and extract dynamic content
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Rotates IPs intelligently to avoid being blocked or flagged as a bot
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Gives developers control with support for custom CSS selectors
Summary Comparison
Firecrawl vs JigsawStack AI Scraper
◐ = partial ❌ = inaccurate/fails ✅ = accurate/succeeds
| Feature / Goal | Firecrawl | JigsawStack AI Scraper |
|---|---|---|
| 💽 Accurate data extractions | Extracted data correctly from 1 out of 6 websites ❌ | Extracted data from all tested sites accurately, following the expected schema ✅ |
| ❤️🩹 Automatic error handling | Frequently threw errors or returned false positives when encountering blocked sites ❌ | Automatically handles errors, retries when needed, and unblocks sites to extract complete data ✅ |
| 🔁 Auto unblocker | Blocked on all protected sites, even with proxy and stealth mode enabled ❌ | Successfully unblocked every site tested, including complex ones like LinkedIn and Reddit ✅ |
| ♾️ Fully managed scale | Limited to 5 concurrent browsers on Hobby plan ($16/month) and 50 on Standard plan ($83/month) ❌ | Supports over 10,000 concurrent browser sessions. Fully managed with no limits and usage-based pricing ✅ |
| 🧠 Smart actions (scrolling, etc.) | Does not automatically scroll to load dynamic content. Only partial page data is scraped ❌ | Automatically scrolls, detects dynamic content, and extracts all relevant values without user input ✅ |
| 🌐 Proxies and IP rotation | Proxy feature failed to prevent blocking. Still flagged by bot detectors even in stealth mode ❌ | Rarely needs proxies. When needed, it uses a built-in rotating proxy system that bypasses even Cloudflare bot checks. ✅ |
| 🧑💻 Developer control | No support for advanced configuration such as custom CSS selectors, browser dimensions, or headers ❌ | Offers full developer control, including custom CSS selectors, browser size, custom cookies, proxy support, and Puppeteer-level configuration options ✅ |
Full Comparisons
Something simple
Site: https://news.ycombinator.com
Prompt: ["post_titles", "post_points", "post_username"]
Firecrawl
JigsawStack
Both Firecrawl and JigsawStack did a solid job extracting values accurately. However, JigsawStack went a step further by automatically including additional information, such as links that can be easily looped over and scraped, making web crawling straightforward.
JigsawStack also returns the CSS selectors associated with the extracted content, so you can run your own scripts without needing to figure out how the website is structured.
E-Commerce
Site: https://www.amazon.com/GIGABYTE-GeForce-WINDFORCE-Graphics-GV-N506TWF2OC-16GD/dp/B0F5BBGCSZ
Prompt: ["product_price", "product_description", "product_brand"]
Firecrawl
JigsawStack
Firecrawl was unable to extract the data, even with a proxy enabled. JigsawStack retrieved all content successfully without requiring any proxy.
Nutritiously hard to scrape site
Site: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoeven/
Prompt: ["profile_person_name", "work_at_company_name", "job_title"]
Firecrawl
JigsawStack
Firecrawl doesn’t allow scraping of websites like LinkedIn by default and throws an error while JigsawStack extracts any public information you find on the site easily.
Cloudflare Unblocker
Site: https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/text
Prompt: ["titles", "markdown_full_site", "coding_snippets"]
OpenAI docs are protected and blocked by Cloudflare.
Firecrawl
JigsawStack
Firecrawl returns a false positive when attempting to scrape the OpenAI site, resulting in an empty dataset instead of an error. In contrast, JigsawStack successfully unblocks and scrapes the site as expected.
Social Media
Site: https://www.reddit.com/r/ycombinator
Prompt: ["post_titles", "post_descriptions", "username"]
Firecrawl
JigsawStack
Firecrawl failed to scrape the site, while JigsawStack accurately extracted the subreddit content into the structured keys we defined.
Long site/list
Site: https://startups.gallery/investors
Prompt: ["listing_names"]
Firecrawl
JigsawStack
Firecrawl scraped the initial section of the site but failed to capture the full content, which required scrolling. JigsawStack automatically handled scrolling and extracted the complete data accurately, with no cutoffs or missing sections.
Comparison script we ran
Conclusion
The comparison showed that JigsawStack outperformed Firecrawl in the majority of tests. Firecrawl relies heavily on LLMs like GPT-4, which can produce errors, hallucinations, and is limited by token constraints. JigsawStack, on the other hand, uses a custom trained model that mimics the steps a developer would take when scraping a site, from inspecting network logs to using CSS selectors. This results in higher quality data and greater reliability.
Firecrawl vs JigsawStack AI Scraper
◐ = partial ❌ = inaccurate/fails ✅ = accurate/succeeds
| Feature / Goal | Firecrawl | JigsawStack AI Scraper |
|---|---|---|
| 💽 Accurate data extractions | Extracted data correctly from 1 out of 6 websites ❌ | Extracted data from all tested sites accurately, following the expected schema ✅ |
| ❤️🩹 Automatic error handling | Frequently threw errors or returned false positives when encountering blocked sites ❌ | Automatically handles errors, retries when needed, and unblocks sites to extract complete data ✅ |
| 🔁 Auto unblocker | Blocked on all protected sites, even with proxy and stealth mode enabled ❌ | Successfully unblocked every site tested, including complex ones like LinkedIn and Reddit ✅ |
| ♾️ Fully managed scale | Limited to 5 concurrent browsers on Hobby plan ($16/month) and 50 on Standard plan ($83/month) ❌ | Supports over 10,000 concurrent browser sessions. Fully managed with no limits and usage-based pricing ✅ |
| 🧠 Smart actions (scrolling, etc.) | Does not automatically scroll to load dynamic content. Only partial page data is scraped ❌ | Automatically scrolls, detects dynamic content, and extracts all relevant values without user input ✅ |
| 🌐 Proxies and IP rotation | Proxy feature failed to prevent blocking. Still flagged by bot detectors even in stealth mode ❌ | Rarely needs proxies. When needed, it uses a built-in rotating proxy system that bypasses even Cloudflare bot checks. ✅ |
| 🧑💻 Developer control | No support for advanced configuration such as custom CSS selectors, browser dimensions, or headers ❌ | Offers full developer control, including custom CSS selectors, browser size, custom cookies, proxy support, and Puppeteer-level configuration options ✅ |
How to get started with JigsawStack AI Scraper
Get API here: https://jigsawstack.com/ai-web-scraper
👥 Join the JigsawStack Community
Have questions or want to show off what you’ve built? Join the JigsawStack developer community on Discord and X/Twitter. Let’s build something amazing together!