URL to Markdown APIs compared: Firecrawl, Jina Reader and Shotlane
Three ways to turn a web page into clean Markdown for a model, compared on the numbers from their own pricing pages and docs. All three render JavaScript, read PDFs and offer an MCP server; they differ in how you pay and what else you get.
Which one to pick
- Firecrawl for tens of thousands of pages a month, whole-site crawls, web search or JSON extraction.
- Jina Reader for the simplest start: put
r.jina.ai/in front of a URL, no key needed at low volume. - Shotlane if you read pages now and then and don't want a monthly plan, or also need screenshots and PDFs of the same pages.
At a glance
| Shotlane | Firecrawl | Jina Reader | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | |||
| 5,000 a month | $29once, 10,000 | $19/moHobby | By tokensdepends on page length |
| 100,000 a month | $216once | $83/moStandard, billed yearly | By tokens |
| Free | 100/mo+ 20/day without a key | 1,000/mo | 20/minno key; 10M tokens with a key |
| Unused credits | Never expire | Monthly quota | ? |
| 403 and 404 pages charged | No | Yes | ? |
| Features | |||
| JavaScript pages | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| PDF URLs | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Crawl a whole site | ✓500 pages a job | ✓ | — |
| Web search | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Screenshots of the page | ✓+ PDFs, videos | ✓link expires in 24 h | — |
| MCP server | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
✓ yes · ✕ no · — not listed on their site · ? not stated on their pricing page. Prices in USD without VAT, checked 2026-10-21. /mo is a monthly subscription; "once" is a one-time pack.
- Firecrawl's Hobby plan is $16 a month billed yearly. Plan credits roll over only on Scale (for one month); top-up credits stay until you cancel. A scrape that returns nothing is free.
- Jina Reader bills by output tokens and gives every new key 10M free tokens. Its MCP server takes a key optionally.
- Shotlane's $216 for 100,000 pages is 2 × 40,000 and 2 × 10,000 packs: at that steady volume Firecrawl is cheaper. Bot-protection pages are refunded too.
Try it
No key needed for a first look: curl https://shotlane.dev/md/https://react.dev/learn returns the page as Markdown (20 requests a day per IP). With a key, /v1/markdown has no daily limit. The free URL-to-Markdown tool shows the output in the browser.
curl "https://shotlane.dev/v1/markdown?url=https://react.dev/learn" -H "X-API-Key: $SHOTLANE_API_KEY"
Sources
Checked on 2026-10-21: Firecrawl pricing · Firecrawl scrape docs · Firecrawl MCP server · Jina Reader · Jina MCP server. Shotlane's numbers come from our pricing and docs. All names are trademarks of their owners; Shotlane is not affiliated with them, and we sell one of the products compared here.
Other comparisons: Screenshot APIs compared · HTML to PDF APIs compared · Shotlane vs running Playwright yourself
Try Shotlane free
100 free renders a month, no card. If it works for you, a $9 pack lasts until you use it up.
100 free renders a month · no credit card · key shown instantly