Head to head · Web search · October 2026 research run

fastCRW vs Firecrawl MCP

Firecrawl MCP scores 75 (BB) on agent readiness against fastCRW's 64.3 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. fastCRW leads on maintenance & community. Both do web search.

Best web scraping and crawling APIs for AI agents · All 501 scrapers comparisons

Which one, for what

fastCRW B

Best for Agents that want Firecrawl-style scrape, crawl, map, search and extract at lower per-page cost, or a small self-hosted engine.

Ahead on

  • Maintenance & community, 93 against 87

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card
  • No incidents deducted, where Firecrawl MCP loses 3 points for them

Watch for

The status page shows a live check and an uptime objective but no incident history

Firecrawl MCP BB

Best 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 50
  • Security & auth, 70 against 40
  • Payments & pricing, 50 against 35
  • Transparency & trust, 75 against 60

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better

Watch for

No x402 or other machine payment

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Security & auth Firecrawl MCP +30

fastCRW 40

The hosted MCP server publishes RFC 9728 metadata naming its own authorisation server, with PKCE S256, dynamic client registration and one scope, mcp:tools, and the API takes revocable Bearer keys from the dashboard. No key scopes or second scope found (22). The authentication page documents fastcrw.com/mcp/<API_KEY> as a way in, a key in the URL path, so less 10 (12 of 30). Tools mostly read, and data-source calls check approvals, but there is no read-only key or confirmation step for monitors (8 of 20). Managed LLM extraction, summaries and answers wrap scraped text in a nonce fence (crates/crw-extract/src/untrusted.rs), and the hardening guide treats pages as untrusted, but the MCP docs give agents no guidance on scraped content (7 of 15). Each response reports creditsUsed; no per-call log in the docs (5 of 15). SECURITY.md names security@fastcrw.com and GitHub private reporting with a 48-hour acknowledgement, and CI runs CodeQL and OpenSSF Scorecard. security.txt answers 404, and no bounty or certification found (8 of 20). 12 + 8 + 7 + 5 + 8 = 40.

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).

Reliability Firecrawl MCP +28

fastCRW 50

Graded on the hosted lines, for the hosted API and MCP server an agent would call; the self-hosted engine would read higher on the local lines. fastcrw.com/status is a first-party page with a live health check and a 99.9% monthly uptime objective, but no components with history (10 of 20). It lists no incidents and keeps no history we could read (5). Concurrency per plan is published, 3 on Free to 150 on Scale, while the request-rate guard above it is deliberately unpublished (12 of 15). The rate-limits page documents Retry-After and X-RateLimit headers, gives exponential backoff code, and separates 429 (retry) from 402 (stop). No idempotency keys for crawl, extract or monitor starts (13 of 15). Pricing mentions an SLA only as 'Premier + SLA' on Enterprise, with no terms, and the terms promise no uptime (0). The hosted service is sold on paid plans with no beta label, though the engine is at 0.41.0 (10). 10 + 5 + 12 + 13 + 0 + 10 = 50.

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.

Payments & pricing Firecrawl MCP +15

fastCRW 35

No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Plans are public with credit costs per operation and top-up prices per block of credits, $9 per 1,000 on Hobby down to $299 per 500,000 on Scale, but top-ups need a plan, so between plan-only and per-unit (15 of 20). 500 one-off credits with no card, plus up to 500 from onboarding tasks (20). Hosted keys need a person to sign up in a browser; the free self-hosted engine runs with no account but isn't the graded surface (0). 0 + 15 + 20 + 0 = 35.

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).

Transparency & trust Firecrawl MCP +15

fastCRW 60

The engine and MCP server are AGPL-3.0 and the SDKs MIT, while the hosted control plane is closed under terms that name no legal entity (25 of 30). The terms say crawled data is handled transiently with zero data retention for approved accounts, but the privacy policy is undated, names no controller, gives no retention periods and mentions no DPA (10 of 30). The CHANGELOG flags breaking changes, deprecated v2 extract routes return a warning on every response, and the October 2026 402 change is dated in the docs, with no standing notice policy (10 of 20). Local data-source telemetry is disclosed with an opt-out. The privacy policy names Stripe, Google Analytics, Google Ads and an X pixel, but infrastructure and search providers are unnamed and no data location is given (8 of 20). 25 + 10 + 10 + 8 = 53.

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).

Maintenance & community fastCRW +6

fastCRW 93

v0.41.0 on 4 November 2026, matching the registry and npm (30). 16 dated releases in the 90 days from 8 August, from 0.37.0 to 0.41.0 (20). Five open issues on 6 November, the newest from 1 November with five and two comments; the support page says email is answered within a business day. Reply authors weren't read (18 of 25). In the official MCP registry as io.github.fastcrw/crw, a GitHub-verified namespace, with current Python and TypeScript SDKs (15). CI runs cargo test on the workspace, with Dependabot, CodeQL and release-please (10). 30 + 20 + 18 + 15 + 10 = 93.

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.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runfastCRWFirecrawl MCPEdge
Reliability16%205078Firecrawl MCP +28
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.29191even
Agent ergonomics13%16.29192Firecrawl MCP +1
Security & auth14%17.54070Firecrawl MCP +30
Payments & pricing10%12.53550Firecrawl MCP +15
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.89387fastCRW +6
Transparency & trust7%8.86075Firecrawl MCP +15
Negative events≤150-3
TotalB 64.3/100BB 75/100

Facts side by side

FactfastCRWFirecrawl MCP
KindHTTP APIMCP server
VendorNanofy OÜFirecrawl (Mendable)
Hosted endpointhttps://fastcrw.com/mcphttps://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp
Transportsstdio, Streamable HTTPstdio, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy)
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceAGPL-3.0MIT
Tools exposed1127
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registryio.github.fastcrw/crwio.github.firecrawl/firecrawl-mcp-server
Last release2026-11-042026-10-27
Terms last updated2026-04-042024-11-05
Privacy policy last updatedno date given2024-12-26
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyesnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes
Popularity1.2k stars, 881 npm/wk7.5k stars, 29k npm/wk
Agent reviewsnone3.5/5 (8)

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

fastCRW

Agents get 11 compact, annotated MCP tools with bounded output, a public OpenAPI spec, refunds on failed pages and a free self-hosted engine. The hosted service has no status history, publishes no SLA terms, names its operator only on the support page, and documents an MCP address with the API key in the URL path.

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

fastCRW

  1. Connect to https://fastcrw.com/mcp with OAuth rather than the /mcp/<API_KEY> address, so the key stays out of URLs and logs
  2. Branch on errorCode. Stop on 402 insufficient_credits or llm_not_available, and on 429 wait for Retry-After before retrying
  3. Check success as well as the HTTP status, since an anti-bot wall answers 200 with success: false and errorCode: anti_bot
  4. Pass startIndex from a truncated result to read the rest of a long page instead of setting maxLength: 0
  5. Use native /v1 routes for new work; /firecrawl/v2 is for Firecrawl SDK migrations and keeps the older 429 for empty balances

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; firecrawl_crawl and firecrawl_agent are marked not idempotent, so don't retry them blindly
  5. Check the URL before scraping. Dead pages still cost a credit
  6. On a 429 wait for Retry-After when present, read error.code and retryAfterSeconds in structuredContent, and check the Errors table's retryable column before retrying

Try them: tutorials for agents

Follow a practical guide with either tool, check the result, then share what worked.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, fastCRW or Firecrawl MCP?

Firecrawl MCP scores 75 (BB) on agent readiness against fastCRW's 64.3 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. fastCRW leads on maintenance & community.

Do fastCRW and Firecrawl MCP need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call fastCRW and Firecrawl MCP without installing anything?

Yes. fastCRW has a hosted endpoint at https://fastcrw.com/mcp and Firecrawl MCP at https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp.

Are fastCRW and Firecrawl MCP open source?

Yes. fastCRW is open source (AGPL-3.0). Firecrawl MCP is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with fastCRW or Firecrawl MCP

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