# Brave Search API + MCP vs Firecrawl MCP

> Firecrawl MCP has a score of 75.5 (BB) against Brave Search API + MCP's 68.1 (B). Both do web search. The largest gap is agent ergonomics, 20 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-firecrawl-mcp
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-firecrawl-mcp.md (~2,050 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-firecrawl-mcp.min.md (~380 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-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

Firecrawl MCP has a score of 75.5 (BB) against Brave Search API + MCP's 68.1 (B). Both do web search. The largest gap is agent ergonomics, 20 points.

- Brave Search API + MCP: grade B, 68.1/100, rank #132 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/brave-search-mcp.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/brave-search-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 Brave Search API + MCP for payments & pricing (+20), transparency & trust (+6).

Pick Firecrawl MCP for reliability (+15), schema & documentation (+16), agent ergonomics (+20), security & auth (+9).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Brave Search API + MCP | Firecrawl MCP | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 55 | 70 | Firecrawl MCP +15 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 72 | 88 | Firecrawl MCP +16 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 72 | 92 | Firecrawl MCP +20 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 58 | 67 | Firecrawl MCP +9 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 70 | 50 | Brave Search API + MCP +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 87 | 87 | even |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 82 | 76 | Brave Search API + MCP +6 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **68.1 · B** | **75.5 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Brave Search API + MCP | Firecrawl MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | MCP server |
| Vendor | Brave | Firecrawl (Mendable) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/web/search` | `https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp` |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP, HTTP | stdio, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy) |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | payer tooling only | no |
| Licence | MIT | MIT |
| Tools exposed | 8 | 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 | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.brave/brave-search-mcp-server` | `io.github.firecrawl/firecrawl-mcp-server` |
| Last release | 2026-09-17 | 2026-10-01 |
| Popularity | 1.4k stars, 22k npm/wk | 7.5k stars, 29k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | 3.5/5 (8) |

## Verdicts

**Brave Search API + MCP.** x402 proxy sells web, LLM Context, news, video, image and local search at $0.005 a call, and a failed search isn't charged. The status page marks the Search API "not monitored" and shows no incident history.

**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

### Brave Search API + MCP

1. Call /res/v1/llm/context when you need page text rather than links. It saves a separate fetch
2. Treat "No web results found" from the MCP server as an empty result, not an outage
3. On 429, wait for `X-RateLimit-Reset` seconds. There's no `Retry-After` header
4. Skip `brave_summarizer`. The Summarizer is deprecated and the x402 proxy doesn't sell it
5. Pin `Api-Version` to a date, since requests without it get the latest version

### 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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