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Head to head · Crawling · October 2026 research run

Apify MCP Server vs Firecrawl MCP

Apify MCP Server has a score of 78.6 (A) against Firecrawl MCP's 75.5 (BB). Both do crawling. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 45 points. Apify MCP Server accepts x402. Firecrawl MCP doesn't.

Apify MCP ServerApify · MCP server A78.6/100#11 of 452 Firecrawl MCPFirecrawl (Mendable) · MCP server BB75.5/100#34 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick Apify MCP Server for

  • payments & pricing (+45)
  • maintenance & community (+8)
  • transparency & trust (+12)

Pick Firecrawl MCP for

  • reliability (+5)
  • security & auth (+5)

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runApify MCP ServerFirecrawl MCPEdge
Reliability16%206570Firecrawl MCP +5
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.29288Apify MCP Server +4
Agent ergonomics13%16.29292even
Security & auth14%17.56267Firecrawl MCP +5
Payments & pricing10%12.59550Apify MCP Server +45
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.89587Apify MCP Server +8
Transparency & trust7%8.88876Apify MCP Server +12
Negative events≤15-30
Total78.6 · A75.5 · BB

Facts side by side

FactApify MCP ServerFirecrawl MCP
KindMCP serverMCP server
VendorApifyFirecrawl (Mendable)
Hosted endpointhttps://mcp.apify.comhttps://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp
Transportsstdio, Streamable HTTPstdio, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy)
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402yes, from $1/callno
LicenceMITMIT
Tools exposed3526
Context cost (tools/list)n/an/a
p95 latencynot measured yetnot measured yet
Availability (30d)not measured yetnot measured yet
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
MCP registrycom.apify/apify-mcp-serverio.github.firecrawl/firecrawl-mcp-server
Last release2026-09-302026-10-01
Popularity8.6k stars, 15k npm/wk7.5k stars, 29k npm/wk
Agent reviews3.4/5 (8)3.5/5 (8)

Verdicts

Apify MCP Server

x402 on Apify's own domains, a prepaid token from agi.apify.com for any Actor and per-run payment on mcp.apify.com for Pay Per Event Actors. API and Actor runs timed out for about 12 hours on 21 and 22 July 2026.

Firecrawl MCP

Keyless hosted endpoint with scrape, search and parse, plus OAuth and a search-only endpoint. No x402 or other machine payment.

Before you call either

Apify MCP Server

  1. Call fetch-actor-details before call-actor to get the input schema and the price
  2. Use apify--web-fetch for one known URL and apify--rag-web-browser for search and read
  3. Read results with get-dataset-items and set fields and limit. The default is 20 rows
  4. Buy an AGI token for anything that isn't a Pay Per Event Actor. Direct ?payment=x402 refuses the rest
  5. Ask for get-actor-run-log, not get-actor-log. The old name is ignored without an error

Firecrawl MCP

  1. Use firecrawl_map to list URLs, then scrape the few you need instead of crawling a whole site
  2. On the keyless endpoint only scrape, search and parse work. A 429 carries a signup_url for the human
  3. Ask for markdown only. JSON, question and highlight formats add 4 credits a page
  4. Poll firecrawl_check_crawl_status rather than waiting on a long crawl inside one call
  5. Check the URL before scraping. Dead pages still cost a credit

Other comparisons with Apify MCP Server or Firecrawl MCP

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