# 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. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apify-mcp-vs-firecrawl-mcp
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apify-mcp-vs-firecrawl-mcp.md (~1,900 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apify-mcp-vs-firecrawl-mcp.min.md (~380 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apify-mcp-vs-firecrawl-mcp.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-04

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 Server: grade A, 78.6/100, rank #11 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/apify-mcp.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/apify-mcp.json
- Firecrawl MCP: grade BB, 75.5/100, rank #34 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/firecrawl-mcp.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/firecrawl-mcp.json

## 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

| Category | Weight | Apify MCP Server | Firecrawl MCP | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 65 | 70 | Firecrawl MCP +5 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 92 | 88 | Apify MCP Server +4 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 92 | 92 | even |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 62 | 67 | Firecrawl MCP +5 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 95 | 50 | Apify MCP Server +45 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 95 | 87 | Apify MCP Server +8 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 88 | 76 | Apify MCP Server +12 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -3 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **78.6 · A** | **75.5 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Apify MCP Server | Firecrawl MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | MCP server |
| Vendor | Apify | Firecrawl (Mendable) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.apify.com` | `https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp` |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP | stdio, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy) |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | yes, from $1/call | no |
| Licence | MIT | MIT |
| Tools exposed | 35 | 26 |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | `com.apify/apify-mcp-server` | `io.github.firecrawl/firecrawl-mcp-server` |
| Last release | 2026-09-30 | 2026-10-01 |
| Popularity | 8.6k stars, 15k npm/wk | 7.5k stars, 29k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.4/5 (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

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