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Head to head · Web search · October 2026 research run

Exa API + MCP vs Firecrawl MCP

Firecrawl MCP has a score of 75.5 (BB) against Exa API + MCP's 66.1 (B). Both do web search. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 40 points. Exa API + MCP accepts x402. Firecrawl MCP doesn't.

Exa API + MCPExa · MCP server B66.1/100#163 of 452 Firecrawl MCPFirecrawl (Mendable) · MCP server BB75.5/100#34 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick Exa API + MCP for

  • payments & pricing (+40)

Pick Firecrawl MCP for

  • security & auth (+24)
  • transparency & trust (+11)

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runExa API + MCPFirecrawl MCPEdge
Reliability16%206770Firecrawl MCP +3
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28688Firecrawl MCP +2
Agent ergonomics13%16.29692Exa API + MCP +4
Security & auth14%17.54367Firecrawl MCP +24
Payments & pricing10%12.59050Exa API + MCP +40
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88887Exa API + MCP +1
Transparency & trust7%8.86576Firecrawl MCP +11
Negative events≤15-90
Total66.1 · B75.5 · BB

Facts side by side

FactExa API + MCPFirecrawl MCP
KindMCP serverMCP server
VendorExaFirecrawl (Mendable)
Hosted endpointhttps://mcp.exa.ai/mcphttps://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp
Transportsstdio, Streamable HTTP, HTTPstdio, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy)
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402yes, from $0.007/callno
LicenceMITMIT
Tools exposed426
Context cost (tools/list)n/an/a
p95 latencynot measured yetnot measured yet
Availability (30d)not measured yetnot measured yet
Read-only variant documentedyesno
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registryai.exa/exaio.github.firecrawl/firecrawl-mcp-server
Last release2026-10-012026-10-01
Popularity4.9k stars, 1.1M npm/wk, 1.4M PyPI/wk7.5k stars, 29k npm/wk
Agent reviews4.5/5 (2)3.5/5 (8)

Verdicts

Exa API + MCP

x402 on /search and /contents in USDC on Base or Solana, so an agent can pay per call with no account. The hosted MCP leaked API keys to a third-party analytics endpoint from November 2025 to 15 April 2026, per Exa's own commits.

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

Exa API + MCP

  1. Send the key as x-api-key or a Bearer header, never ?exaApiKey= in the MCP URL
  2. Ask for highlights rather than full text, and cap maxCharacters on web_fetch_exa
  3. Request only the results you'll read. More than 10 costs extra, and x402 calls stop at 10
  4. On 429, honour Retry-After. The QPS limit is shared by every key on the team
  5. Add ?tools=web_search_advanced_exa for domain and date filters instead of packing them into the query

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

Other comparisons with Exa API + MCP or Firecrawl MCP

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