Making AI Agents Browse the Web Blazingly Fast
AI agents need to browse the web. Whether you're building a RAG pipeline, a research assistant, or an autonomous agent that gathers information, you need a fast and reliable way to extract content from websites.
The naive approach—spinning up headless browsers—hits a wall fast.
The Hidden Cost of Browser Infrastructure
Running headless Chrome at scale is deceptively expensive:
- Memory: Each Chrome instance eats 200-500MB RAM
- CPU: JavaScript execution and rendering are compute-intensive
- Orchestration: Managing browser pools, handling crashes, rotating sessions
- Anti-bot detection: Cloudflare, DataDome, PerimeterX actively block automation
- Fingerprinting: Browser fingerprints get flagged without careful spoofing
- Proxies: Residential proxy rotation adds another layer of complexity
For AI agents that need to browse dozens or hundreds of pages per task, managing this infrastructure yourself is a distraction from your core product.
Managed crawling APIs handle all of this for you. I benchmarked three options to find the fastest.
The Benchmark
I tested Apify, Firecrawl, and Spider.cloud against two types of production websites:
| Site | Type | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Linear.app | JS-heavy SPA | React/Next.js, requires browser rendering |
| HugoBlox.com | HTTP-simple | Mostly static, can be fetched without JS |
Configuration:
- Max pages: 10 (initial test)
- Output format: Markdown (LLM-ready)
- Anti-bot measures: enabled where available
Results: Spider.cloud Wins on Content and Cost
Linear.app (JS-heavy React/Next.js SPA)
| Service | Duration | Pages | Cost | Total Chars | Avg Chars/Page |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Firecrawl | 45.7s | 10 | ~$0.01 | 41,216 | 4,122 |
| Spider.cloud | 63.8s | 10 | ~$0.002 | 113,535 | 11,354 |
| Apify | 283.2s | 8 | ~$0.00 | 79,868 | 9,984 |
HugoBlox.com (HTTP-simple static site)
| Service | Duration | Pages | Cost | Total Chars | Avg Chars/Page |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Firecrawl | 21.7s | 10 | ~$0.01 | 50,717 | 5,072 |
| Spider.cloud | 7.1s | 10 | ~$0.002 | 91,424 | 9,142 |
| Apify | 52.3s | 6 | ~$0.00 | 19,131 | 3,189 |
Key Findings
- Speed: Spider.cloud is fastest on simple HTTP sites (7s vs 22s for Firecrawl), Firecrawl is faster on JS-heavy sites (46s vs 64s)
- Content extraction: Spider.cloud extracts ~2x more content per page across both site types
- Cost: Spider.cloud is 5x cheaper (~$0.002 vs ~$0.01 per 10 pages)
- Reliability: Firecrawl and Spider always got 10 pages; Apify had timeout issues (8 pages on Linear, 6 on HugoBlox)
Why Spider.cloud Extracts More Content
Spider.cloud's "smart mode" waterfall approach not only optimizes speed—it also captures more content:
1. Try fast HTTP request first
2. If blocked or JS-rendered → fall back to Chrome
3. If still failing → rotate proxy and retry
This means static pages get crawled at HTTP speed (milliseconds), while JS-heavy pages still get full browser rendering when needed.
// Spider.cloud config
{
request: 'smart', // Waterfall: HTTP → Chrome
return_format: 'markdown',
metadata: true,
depth: 2
}The streaming API also helps—you get pages as they're crawled:
const response = await axios.post(url, payload, {
responseType: 'stream'
});
stream.on('data', (chunk) => {
const page = JSON.parse(line);
// Process immediately—no waiting
});Service Comparison
| Feature | Spider.cloud | Firecrawl | Apify |
|---|---|---|---|
| Speed (simple sites) | Fastest (7s) | Medium (22s) | Slowest (52s) |
| Speed (JS-heavy) | Medium (64s) | Fastest (46s) | Slowest (283s) |
| Content extracted | Most (~2x) | Less | Medium |
| Pricing | $0.0002/page | $0.001/page | Per-compute |
| API style | Streaming | Polling | Actor jobs |
| Reliability | 10/10 pages | 10/10 pages | 6-8/10 pages |
When Each Makes Sense
Spider.cloud — Your default choice for AI agent pipelines. Best content extraction, lowest cost, and fastest on simple sites. The waterfall approach means you're not paying browser overhead for pages that don't need it.
Firecrawl — When you know you only crawl js-heavy sites.
Apify — Never.
The ROI
At $0.0002/page, crawling 10,000 pages costs $2.
Compare to Firecrawl at ~$10 for the same volume, or running browser infrastructure yourself:
- EC2/compute costs for headless Chrome
- Proxy service subscriptions
- Engineering time managing the pipeline
- Debugging anti-bot blocks
For AI agents that need reliable web access, managed crawling APIs are an easy win. Spider.cloud's content extraction advantage and lower cost make it my default choice.