Draco - Self-Hostable Rust Web Scraper and Firecrawl Alternative

TL;DR

TL;DR: Draco is a native Rust web scraper that outputs clean Markdown, metadata, and structured JSON from any URL — including SPAs — without a headless browser. Runs as a single binary, ships with a Firecrawl-compatible REST API and an MCP server.

What Is Draco?

Draco is an open-source web scraping tool written in Rust. Point it at a URL and get back clean Markdown, page metadata, or structured JSON — without spinning up a headless Chrome instance per request. It is described by its author as a “faster, cheaper, and lighter Firecrawl drop-in replacement that you own entirely.”

The project was shared on Hacker News in August 2026 and currently sits at 76 stars on GitHub.

Source and Accuracy Notes

• Project page: github.com/0xchasercat/draco (no separate marketing site)
• Source repository: github.com/0xchasercat/draco
• Latest release: v0.20.5 (GitHub Releases API)
• License: not explicitly declared in repository (no LICENSE file present)
• HN launch thread: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49148163
• Source last checked: 2026-08-07

Setup

Install the binary

The fastest route on Linux or macOS:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/0xchasercat/draco/main/install.sh | sh

This auto-detects your OS and architecture, downloads the latest release binary, and appends a shell init line to your ~/.zshrc, ~/.bashrc, or ~/.config/fish/config.fish.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/0xchasercat/draco && cd draco
cargo build --release

Build prerequisites: cmake, a C/C++ compiler, clang/libclang, perl, pkg-config.

• Debian/Ubuntu: apt install build-essential cmake clang libclang-dev perl pkg-config
• macOS: Xcode Command Line Tools + brew install cmake

Core Scraping Commands

Markdown output (default)

draco scrape https://example.com          # clean Markdown on stdout
draco scrape https://example.com > page.md # pipe to file

A standard HTML page resolves in roughly 300 ms with a single TLS-fingerprinted fetch — no browser involved.

Full JSON envelope

draco scrape https://example.com --json --pretty
# → { "markdown": "...", "metadata": { ... }, "trace": { ... } }

Structured JSON extraction (SPAs and data-driven sites)

Beyond Markdown, Draco can extract structured data an SPA loads from its own API, escalating through tiers:

draco scrape https://app.example.com --format json --pretty       # data[]
draco scrape https://app.example.com --extract '$.props.pageProps'
draco scrape https://app.example.com --format both                # markdown + data

Available formats: markdown, html, raw-html, links, json, endpoints, both (repeatable).

Client-rendered SPAs (Tier 2)

When the initial static fetch yields near-empty content, Draco automatically hydrates the page in an in-process V8 isolate, serializes the live DOM, and re-runs the content extraction pipeline over it. No headless Chrome fleet required.

draco scrape https://spa.example.com            # thin shell → hydrated Markdown
draco scrape https://spa.example.com --tier-max 1   # opt out: static shell only

Daemon Mode (Firecrawl-compatible API)

Run Draco as a persistent HTTP daemon — the process stays warm and existing Firecrawl clients point at it unchanged:

draco serve                        # http://127.0.0.1:3002 (Firecrawl's default port)
draco serve --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8080 --max-concurrency 16

curl -X POST http://127.0.0.1:3002/v1/scrape \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"url": "https://spa.example.com", "formats": ["markdown"]}'
# → { "success": true, "data": { "markdown": …, "metadata": { … } } }

Draco rejects formats it does not yet produce (html, rawHtml, links, screenshot) with a clear 400. Unknown Firecrawl fields are silently ignored. Per-request extensions include tierMax, captureWindowMs, ignoreRobots, proxy, and timeout.

MCP Server

Draco ships a built-in MCP server for integration with AI coding agents:

draco mcp                        # stdio transport (newline-delimited JSON-RPC)

{ "mcpServers": { "draco": { "command": "draco", "args": ["mcp"] } } }

Additional Commands

# Async crawl jobs
draco crawl https://example.com --limit 50 --depth 2

# Web search
draco search "rust web scraper" --limit 10

# With stealth and politeness
draco scrape https://example.com --proxy socks5://127.0.0.1:9050 --delay 500

Key flags: --format markdown|html|raw-html|links|json|endpoints|both, --json, --extract JSONPATH, --no-main-content, --wait-for ms, --tier-max 0|1|2, --proxy, --delay ms, --timeout ms, --ignore-robots, --allow-unsafe-replay, --runtime-log, --pretty.

How Draco Compares to Firecrawl

| Feature | Draco | Firecrawl | |---|---|---| | Single binary | Yes | No (cloud or self-host via Docker) | | Headless Chrome | No | Yes | | Markdown extraction | Yes | Yes | | SPA hydration (V8) | Yes | Yes | | Firecrawl-compatible API | Yes | — | | MCP server | Yes | No | | Built-in web search | Yes | No | | MIT license | Unclear | Yes |

The most notable architectural difference: Draco uses a Rust-native TLS stack with a browser-faithful JA4 fingerprint to reach pages that block ordinary HTTP clients, whereas Firecrawl relies on headless Chrome.

FAQ

Q: Does Draco support screenshots? A: Screenshots are listed as an unsupported Firecrawl format in Draco’s daemon API. Draco’s daemon mode currently rejects the screenshot format with a 400 error.

Q: What is the license? A: No LICENSE file is present in the repository. The project page describes it as open source but does not specify a license. Treat it as All Rights Reserved unless the author clarifies.

Q: How does Draco handle robots.txt? A: By default, Draco respects robots.txt. Use --ignore-robots to bypass this check.

Q: Does it run on Windows? A: The install script targets Linux and macOS only. For Windows, build from source with cargo build --release.

Conclusion

Draco is a pragmatic alternative to Firecrawl for teams that want full ownership of their scraping infrastructure. The single-binary deployment, Rust-native performance, and Firecrawl-compatible API mean you can migrate existing integrations without rewriting clients. The MCP server makes it natural to use alongside AI coding agents. The main caveat is the ambiguous license — confirm with the author before using it in commercial products.