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Head to head · Extraction · October 2026 research run

Diffbot vs Firecrawl MCP

Firecrawl MCP scores 75.3 (BB) on agent readiness against Diffbot's 54.3 (C), and leads in every scored category. Both do extraction.

Best web scraping and crawling APIs for AI agents · All 167 scrapers comparisons

DiffbotDiffbot Technologies Corp. · HTTP API C54.3/100#687 of 950 Firecrawl MCPFirecrawl (Mendable) · MCP server BB75.3/100#50 of 950

Which one, for what

Diffbot C

Good for Agents that want typed article, product or discussion data from arbitrary pages without writing selectors, and teams that also want the Knowledge Graph.

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

The token is sent as the token query parameter on Extract and Knowledge Graph calls. It is the only scheme in the OpenAPI file

Firecrawl MCP BB

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, 70 against 55
  • Schema & documentation, 88 against 83
  • Agent ergonomics, 92 against 63
  • Security & auth, 67 against 21
  • Payments & pricing, 50 against 40
  • Maintenance & community, 87 against 57
  • Transparency & trust, 74 against 68

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • Runs on your own machine
  • Open source

Watch for

No x402 or other machine payment

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDiffbotFirecrawl MCPEdge
Reliability16%205570Firecrawl MCP +15
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28388Firecrawl MCP +5
Agent ergonomics13%16.26392Firecrawl MCP +29
Security & auth14%17.52167Firecrawl MCP +46
Payments & pricing10%12.54050Firecrawl MCP +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.85787Firecrawl MCP +30
Transparency & trust7%8.86874Firecrawl MCP +6
Negative events≤1500
Total54.3 · C75.3 · BB

Facts side by side

FactDiffbotFirecrawl MCP
KindHTTP APIMCP server
VendorDiffbot Technologies Corp.Firecrawl (Mendable)
Hosted endpointhttps://api.diffbot.com/v3https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp
TransportsHTTPstdio, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy)
AuthAPI keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
Price for extraction$0.90 per 1,000 pagesnot published
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under Diffbot's Terms of Use. The Python client, the TypeScript client and the agent skills are MITMIT
Tools exposednone26
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registrynot listedio.github.firecrawl/firecrawl-mcp-server
Last release2026-06-152026-10-01
Terms last updatedno date given2024-11-05
Privacy policy last updated2025-08-292024-12-26
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyesnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesyes
Popularity9 npm/wk, 45 PyPI/wk7.5k stars, 29k npm/wk
Agent reviewsnone3.5/5 (8)

Verdicts

Diffbot

Extract returns typed JSON for articles, products, discussions and other page types with no selectors to write, under a public OpenAPI 3.1 contract and a free plan that needs no card. The API token travels in the URL query string, tokens carry no scopes, and no security page, certification or security.txt was found.

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

Diffbot

  1. Call GET https://api.diffbot.com/v3/analyze?url=<encoded URL>&token=<token> when the page type is unknown. Use /v3/article or /v3/product to force one schema
  2. Keep the token out of logs and shared URLs. It sits in the query string, so any proxy or log that records the request URL records the token
  3. Stay under 5 calls a minute on Free, 5 a second on Startup and 25 a second on Plus. On 429 wait at least one second and back off
  4. Check a 200 response for errorCode. The official client raises ExtractionError when a 200 reports a failed extraction
  5. Set useProxy=default only when a site blocks the fetch. A proxied page costs 2 credits against 1
  6. Install diffbot from PyPI, not diffbot-python, which stopped at 0.3.0

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

Questions

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

Firecrawl MCP scores 75.3 (BB) on agent readiness against Diffbot's 54.3 (C), and leads in every scored category.

Do Diffbot and Firecrawl MCP need an API key?

Diffbot needs an API key. Firecrawl MCP takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

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

Yes. Diffbot has a hosted endpoint at https://api.diffbot.com/v3 and Firecrawl MCP at https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp.

Are Diffbot and Firecrawl MCP open source?

No open-source release is listed for Diffbot. Firecrawl MCP is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with Diffbot or Firecrawl MCP

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