Grounding with Bing Search vs Firecrawl MCP

Grounding with Bing Search 61

Read as a server-side search tool inside an agent run. The tools return a model's answer with citations rather than raw results, and search_context_size sets how much context web search uses. A caller can't size or inspect the result set itself, since the Bing tools never return their output. Custom Search confines grounding to chosen domains without code (18 of 25). count, freshness, market and language filters, and domain restriction through Custom Search. No pagination or offset (13 of 20). Troubleshooting tables give causes and fixes for connection ID, RBAC and 429 problems, but the tools document no error codes (8 of 20). Searches only read, so a retry is safe apart from the per-transaction charge. No MCP annotations are documented for the toolbox's web search tool (10 of 20). The web_search route needs only a project, a model deployment and the Foundry User role. bing_grounding also needs a paid Bing resource and a project connection. SDKs in Python, C#, JavaScript and Java (12 of 15). Prompt caching gets no hits with the Bing tools, because they add a timestamp to every request. 18 + 13 + 8 + 10 + 12 = 61.

Firecrawl MCP 92

27 tools in the full profile by the README's count (28 on the hosted endpoint with a key, per the contract snapshot), 3 on the keyless endpoint and 9 on the search-only endpoint, and env flags drop the feedback tools (23 of 25, the 11 to 30 band plus 8 for fixed subsets). Format selection, main-content filtering, page limits on map and crawl, and results over 20,000 estimated tokens handed off to retained storage instead of inline (20). Recovery payloads with next actions, and since 3.35.0 API refusals carry a machine-readable code, status and retryAfterSeconds in structuredContent, but schema mismatches reported in open issues (17 of 20). readOnlyHint or destructiveHint on all 28 tools of the hosted full profile, with monitor delete and interact stop marked destructive, and since 3.35.0 idempotentHint on the crawl, agent, interact and monitor tools. No idempotency keys for crawl or agent jobs (17 of 20). One required argument on most tools, and official SDKs in Python and Node (15).

Grounding with Bing Search 20

No x402, MPP or L402 (0). $14 per 1,000 transactions for Grounding with Bing Search and Custom Search, published on microsoft.com without a login (20). No free tier for Grounding with Bing, and an Azure subscription needs a card, as on the Azure Translator listing (0). A person signs up for Azure, creates a Foundry project and, for bing_grounding, a Bing resource (0).

Firecrawl MCP 50

No x402, MPP or L402 in the README, pricing page or agent onboarding guide, re-read on 1 November (0). Plans are public with per-endpoint credit costs (1 a page, search 2 per 10 results, +4 for JSON formats), and $5 top-ups only on paid plans, so between plan-only and per-unit (15 of 20). Free plan with 1,000 credits a month, no card (20). The hosted keyless endpoint gives scrape, search and parse with no signup, but crawl, map and agent need a key. The agent onboarding guide adds key routes through Stripe Projects and, on supported platforms, a WorkOS ID-JAG assertion, both of which start from a person's existing login (15 of 20).

Grounding with Bing Search 68

The tools are typed in the official SDKs (BingGroundingTool, BingCustomSearchPreviewTool, WebSearchTool) in Python, C#, JavaScript and Java, and the toolbox exposes web search as an MCP tool. No public OpenAPI description of the Responses tool types was confirmed from the pages read (10 of 25). Microsoft Learn serves each page as Markdown with accept=text/markdown, though learn.microsoft.com/llms.txt answers 404 (10). The pages say what each of four web grounding routes is for and when to choose it, when to use Custom Search instead, and not to ask the model to summarise a whole page (17 of 20). Parameters are typed with defaults and limits in prose, count 1 to 50 with default 5, freshness values and a date-range form, market and language formats, search_context_size low, medium or high (11 of 15). Examples in Python, C#, TypeScript, Java and REST with expected output, and troubleshooting tables for connection ID, authentication and 429 problems, but no error codes or bodies for the tools (10 of 15). Requests carry api-version=v1 on the toolbox, SDK changelogs are dated and a monthly What's New page lists new articles, the latest for August 2026 (10 of 15). 10 + 10 + 17 + 11 + 10 + 10 = 68.

Firecrawl MCP 91

Public OpenAPI at docs.firecrawl.dev/api-reference/v2-openapi.json (and v1), and zod schemas on every MCP tool (25). llms.txt and Markdown docs (10). The README and server instructions say when not to use a tool, for example to look elsewhere when a browser session must be driven step by step across many calls, and 3.33.4 added when-to-use sentences to the search and scrape descriptions (18 of 20). Typed inputs with enums, but open issue #325 counts 132 parameters with no description and #373 reports a published schema that disagrees with the API, per the 1 October check, not re-read on 1 November. 3.35.0 briefly advertised record-typed inputs as closed empty objects, fixed in 3.36.0 the next day (11 of 15). Examples throughout, keyless failures return structured recovery payloads with next_actions and signup_url, and an Errors reference lists each HTTP status and error string with cause, remedy and whether to retry (15 of 15). A CHANGELOG and firecrawl.dev/changelog. The CHANGELOG now has dated entries for 3.29.0 to 3.36.0, but still skips 3.22 to 3.24 and 3.26 to 3.28 and lists 3.25.0 as unreleased (12 of 15).

Grounding with Bing Search 68

Graded on the hosted lines, for the Foundry Agent Service tools agents call. Azure status page with post-incident reviews and a Foundry Agent Service component (20). The history page read on 6 November lists one review in the 90 days from 8 August that names Foundry Agent Service, intermittent failures and latency in Sweden Central from 10:03 to 15:58 UTC on 29 September 2026. It was one region and partial, and the review doesn't name Grounding with Bing, so minor only, the reading the Azure Translator listing got for the same review (20). The pricing page publishes 150 transactions a second and 1 million a day for each Grounding with Bing resource (15). The web search troubleshooting table says to answer 429 with exponential backoff and retries. No Retry-After or tool-specific overload guidance was found, and searches have no side effects (8 of 15). No SLA naming Grounding with Bing was found. The terms make it a First Party Consumption Service apart from the Online Services terms, and the Online Services SLA document wasn't opened (0). Grounding with Bing Custom Search is marked preview and Grounding with Bing Search is not, but no page read states general availability for it or for the web_search tool, and the .NET SDK is in preview (5 of 10). 20 + 20 + 15 + 8 + 0 + 5 = 68.

Firecrawl MCP 78

Better Stack status page at status.firecrawl.dev with history (20). Four incidents in the 90 days to 1 November 2026, all partial degradations of api.firecrawl.dev, the longest 56 minutes on the /interact prompt field on 27 August (06:00 to 06:56 UTC in the feed) and the others 7, 16 and 46 minutes, with none after 15 September. The 20 July /interact incident has left the window (20). Rate limits published per plan and endpoint, from 10 scrapes a minute on Free to 10,000 on Scale, plus concurrent browsers and a per-IP daily cap for keyless use, re-read on 1 November (15). The Errors reference, linked from the rate-limit page, says 429s carry Retry-After when available, marks every error retryable or not, and gives backoff advice per code. No idempotency keys for calls that start crawl, agent or monitor jobs (13 of 15). SLA on Enterprise only, per the pricing page, with no terms published (0). GA (10). 20 + 20 + 15 + 13 + 0 + 10 = 78.

Grounding with Bing Search 79

Callers authenticate to the Foundry project with Microsoft Entra ID tokens and RBAC roles (Foundry User to run agents, Foundry Project Manager to add connections), with just-in-time Contributor through Entra PIM for provisioning. The Bing resource key sits in a project connection and the agent never holds it. No key in a URL (28 of 30). The tools only read. Custom Search confines grounding to configured public domains, and an admin can turn web search off for a whole subscription. There is no per-agent read-only toggle to set, since the tools have no write path (15 of 20). The web search page tells developers to treat web search results as untrusted input and to keep secrets and personal data out of prompts, and the tool best practices page says the same of all tool outputs. Raw results are not passed back to the caller (10 of 15). Run steps show each tool call and the Bing query sent, and Azure's activity log covers resource changes. No per-query audit log for Bing was found (10 of 15). Microsoft runs a coordinated vulnerability disclosure policy and bounty programmes through MSRC. microsoft.com's security.txt passed its Expires date on 23 September 2026 and still carries it on 6 November, and the Azure compliance attestations are not shown to cover a service whose data leaves the compliance boundary (16 of 20). 28 + 15 + 10 + 10 + 16 = 79.

Firecrawl MCP 70

OAuth on the hosted endpoint /v2/mcp-oauth, a separate OAuth identity for the search-only endpoint, and plain revocable keys as Authorization: Bearer. Keys locked to endpoints and formats, and IP allowlists, are Enterprise only (25 of 30). The README says never to put a key in the server URL. 3.29.1 removed the credential-in-path route from the repository's service image, and it was never documented as an option, so no deduction. 3.36.0 checks Host and Origin in local HTTP mode against DNS rebinding. Keyless and search-only surfaces limit what a session can do, write tools carry destructiveHint, and Alexandria provider terms need explicit user consent and confirmed: true (18 of 20). Retained Alexandria results tell the model that source content is data, not instructions, and Enterprise Threat Protection blocks risky URLs, off by default. The API's opt-in checkPromptInjection classifier is now a top-level scrape option for any format, markdown included, and for crawl, search and monitors (+4 credits, 403 SCRAPE_PROMPT_INJECTION_DETECTED). The MCP tool schemas still don't expose it, so an agent using this server can't turn it on (8 of 15). firecrawl_credit_usage shows spend, by endpoint and by day since 3.34.0, but its description says it can't attribute single jobs, URLs or MCP clients, and we found no per-call log for operators (5 of 15). SOC 2 Type II on the Enterprise page, and security.txt valid to 10 June 2027 with a Bugcrowd vulnerability disclosure programme, re-read on 1 November. CVE-2026-116066 (High in GitHub's unreviewed database, published 25 October), a DNS-rebinding SSRF in the Firecrawl API's Playwright service before 2.11.586, was fixed in a public commit on 21 October that cites issue #5256. No bug bounty found (14 of 20).

Grounding with Bing Search 66

Closed service. The terms of use, updated November 2025, are separate from the Online Services terms and sit under the customer's Microsoft agreement (15 of 30). The docs and the terms agree that the Data Protection Addendum and the Product Terms' privacy and security terms don't apply, that Microsoft and the customer are independent controllers, and that the query and parameters leave the Azure compliance and geographic boundary. The terms defer storage and use of query data to the general Microsoft Privacy Statement and state no retention period (15 of 30). The Bing Search APIs retirement was announced on 16 May 2025 for 11 August 2025, under three months' notice, and the web search page marks the Deep Research tool deprecated with a replacement. Microsoft's lifecycle policy covers Azure services, but no deprecation terms for Grounding with Bing were found (10 of 20). Data location for Bing processing isn't stated, and no sub-processor list for it was found (5 of 20). 15 + 15 + 10 + 5 = 45.

Firecrawl MCP 75

MIT (30). Zero data retention on Enterprise and a DPA from Standard up, but the privacy policy, re-read on 1 November, still dates from 26 December 2024, keeps personal data until you ask for deletion and gives no retention period for scraped content (12 of 30). The v1 endpoints are kept as legacy alongside v2 and the pricing change of 4 September 2026 was dated, but we found no deprecation policy (8 of 20). Data stored in the United States, and Stripe, PostHog, Crisp and Vercel Analytics are named, with no full subprocessor list (10 of 20).