# BrowserAct vs Firecrawl MCP (slim)

> Firecrawl MCP scores 75 (BB) to BrowserAct's 44.4 (E) for extraction. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browseract-vs-firecrawl-mcp.md (~6,150 tokens) · this version ~2,780 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browseract-vs-firecrawl-mcp.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/browseract-vs-firecrawl-mcp
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Firecrawl MCP scores 75 (BB) on agent readiness against BrowserAct's 44.4 (E), and leads in every scored category. Both do extraction.

- BrowserAct: E 44.4, rank #1204 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/browseract.min.md
- Firecrawl MCP: BB 75, rank #72 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/firecrawl-mcp.min.md
- BrowserAct, good for Teams that want no-code, prompt-built scrapers an agent can rerun on a schedule. Also No incidents deducted, where Firecrawl MCP loses 3 points for them.
- Firecrawl MCP, good for Agents that need the whole pipeline (find URLs, scrape to markdown, crawl, monitor) from one server, and for trying without an account. Ahead on Reliability, 78 against 23; Schema & documentation, 91 against 76; Agent ergonomics, 92 against 49; Security & auth, 70 against 41; Payments & pricing, 50 against 25; Maintenance & community, 87 against 61; Transparency & trust, 75 against 44. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; Runs on your own machine; Open source.

| Category | BrowserAct | Firecrawl MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 23 | 78 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 76 | 91 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 49 | 92 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 41 | 70 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 25 | 50 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 61 | 87 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 44 | 75 |

| Fact (where they differ) | BrowserAct | Firecrawl MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | MCP server |
| Vendor | Hongkong Ziniao Technology Co., Limited | Firecrawl (Mendable) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.browseract.com/mcp/` | `https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | stdio, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy) |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Licence | none | MIT |
| Tools exposed | none | 27 |
| MCP registry | not listed | `io.github.firecrawl/firecrawl-mcp-server` |
| Last release | 2026-11-05 | 2026-10-27 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-05-15 | 2024-11-05 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-05-15 | 2024-12-26 |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | none | 7.5k stars, 29k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.5/5 (8) |

Why the edge:
- Reliability, Firecrawl MCP +55: BrowserAct 23 (Hosted reading. No status page found (0) and no readable incident history (5). The docs say there are no rate limits, and give concurrency by plan (2 free, up to 20 for paid API users) and a 7-hour task cap (8). No 429 or retry guidance, and no idempotency keys on task creation (0). No SLA (0). No beta label on the API or MCP server (10). 0 + 5 + 8 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 23.); 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.)
- Agent ergonomics, Firecrawl MCP +43: BrowserAct 49 (Graded on the API, since the MCP tool list isn't published. Task results come back whole, with no field selection found (10). Lists of bots, templates and tasks are paginated (15). Errors carry numeric codes with documented meanings for a few cases (12). No idempotency key on task creation; webhooks and a status endpoint avoid polling loops (5). No official SDK in two languages; the CLI is Python (7). 10 + 15 + 12 + 5 + 7 = 49.); 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).)
- Transparency & trust, Firecrawl MCP +31: BrowserAct 44 (Closed service with published terms naming the operating company and governing law (15). The privacy policy of 15 May 2025 states retention by category and that crawled data is kept per plan and deletable by the user (15). No deprecation policy or notices found (0). No sub-processors or data locations named (3). 15 + 15 + 0 + 3 = 33.); 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).)
- Security & auth, Firecrawl MCP +29: BrowserAct 41 (One account-wide API key type, revocable and listed with last-used time, but without scopes or expiry (18). Confirmation Required mode holds purchases and asset creation or deletion for approval in the BrowserAct page (14). Scraped pages are untrusted, and no prompt-injection guidance was found (3). Keys show last use and runs keep logs (6). No security page, disclosure policy, certification or bug bounty found (0). 18 + 14 + 3 + 6 + 0 = 41.); 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).)
- Maintenance & community, Firecrawl MCP +26: BrowserAct 61 (browser-act-cli 1.6.2 on 5 November 2026, read from PyPI's release feed (30). Six CLI releases from 15 October to 5 November (20). A closed service with a support address, but no public changelog or issue tracker found (8). No official SDKs and no entry in the official MCP registry (0). The CLI package carries no licence or repository in its metadata (3). 30 + 20 + 8 + 0 + 3 = 61.); Firecrawl MCP 87 (firecrawl-mcp 3.36.0 on 27 October 2026, matching the registry (30). 43 version bumps in the 90 days from 3 August to 1 November, 12 of them since 17 October (20). Reported bugs from July and August (#325, #357, #373) show no fix in the repository's commits to 29 October. Issue states and reply times couldn't be read on 1 November (12 of 25, per the 1 October check). io.github.firecrawl/firecrawl-mcp-server at 3.36.0 in the official registry under a GitHub-verified namespace, published 27 October and marked latest (15). CI builds and tests on push and pull request to main, with npm trusted publishing and, since 23 October, a signed container image (10). 30 + 20 + 12 + 15 + 10 = 87.)
- Payments & pricing, Firecrawl MCP +25: BrowserAct 25 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Plan prices and credit costs per bot build, run and workflow step are public, but there is no direct per-call price (15). A free plan with 200 credits; whether it needs a card isn't stated (10). A person signs up and creates the key in the dashboard (0). 0 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 25.); 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).)