Bluefield
Bluefield: the Firecrawl alternative with provenance
Bluefield is a Firecrawl alternative for teams that need verifiable data. In a shared 2026-06-19 benchmark the two tie on coverage (both 96%) and Bluefield is about 3× faster at the median (783 ms vs 2.3 s); Bluefield costs more per scrape and has a longer tail. The decisive difference: Bluefield signs every live result so you can verify it offline.
How to choose a Firecrawl alternative
Weigh coverage on the pages you actually fetch, median (p50) and worst-case (p95) latency, cost per successful scrape, and whether you need cryptographic provenance — a signed, verifiable record of each result that Firecrawl does not provide.
- Provenance / attestation
- A signed, offline-verifiable record of what was fetched, from where, and when.
- p50 vs p95
- Typical vs worst-case latency. Bluefield leads p50; it concedes p95 due to fetch-tier escalation.
- Self-host
- Run the same API + signing pipeline in your own cloud (Docker).
Bluefield capabilities
| Capability | Detail |
|---|---|
| Signed results | Every live fetch is signed + verifiable (cache hits and PDFs unsigned in v1) |
| Surface parity | /scrape, /crawl, /map, /search, /extract — close to Firecrawl |
| Agent-native | MCP server + OpenAPI + llms.txt |
| Watch mode | Signed webhook when a page meaningfully changes |
| Self-host | Docker, same API + attestation pipeline |
Frequently asked questions
- Is Bluefield a drop-in for Firecrawl?
- The surfaces map closely. Point at api.bluefields-data.com with a bf_live_ key and you get the same scrape/crawl/map/search/extract plus a signed manifest on every live result. See the full Bluefield vs Firecrawl comparison for the head-to-head.
- Is Bluefield cheaper than Firecrawl?
- No. Bluefield costs more per successful scrape because its fetcher escalates to browser/unlocker tiers on hard pages. You pay more on hard URLs and get provenance on every one.
- How do they compare on coverage and speed?
- They tie on coverage (both 96% in our latest shared run). Bluefield is ~3× faster at the median but has a longer worst-case tail. Full numbers are on the comparison page and /benchmarks.