# Firecrawl MCP vs Linkup

> Firecrawl MCP has a score of 75.5 (BB) against Linkup's 69.1 (B). Both do web search. The largest gap is security & auth, 35 points. Linkup accepts x402. Firecrawl MCP doesn't. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-linkup
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-linkup.md (~1,950 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-linkup.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-linkup.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 Linkup's 69.1 (B). Both do web search. The largest gap is security & auth, 35 points. Linkup accepts x402. Firecrawl MCP doesn't.

- 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
- Linkup: grade B, 69.1/100, rank #116 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/linkup.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/linkup.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Firecrawl MCP for agent ergonomics (+16), security & auth (+35), transparency & trust (+12).

Pick Linkup for payments & pricing (+30).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Firecrawl MCP | Linkup | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 70 | 70 | even |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 88 | 88 | even |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 92 | 76 | Firecrawl MCP +16 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 67 | 32 | Firecrawl MCP +35 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 50 | 80 | Linkup +30 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 87 | 83 | Firecrawl MCP +4 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 76 | 64 | Firecrawl MCP +12 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **75.5 · BB** | **69.1 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Firecrawl MCP | Linkup |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Firecrawl (Mendable) | Linkup |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp` | `https://api.linkup.so/v1/search` |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy) | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | yes, from $0.01/call |
| Licence | MIT | none |
| Tools exposed | 26 | 4 |
| 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.firecrawl/firecrawl-mcp-server` | `so.linkup.mcp/linkup-mcp-server` |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-09-30 |
| Popularity | 7.5k stars, 29k npm/wk | 29 stars, 54k npm/wk, 84k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (8) | 4/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Firecrawl MCP.** Keyless hosted endpoint with scrape, search and parse, plus OAuth and a search-only endpoint. No x402 or other machine payment.

**Linkup.** Per-call prices from $0.005, and no credit taken for errors, missing parameters or empty results. 429 covers both exhausted credit and rate limiting, with no `Retry-After`.

## Before you call either

### 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

### Linkup

1. On 429, check the credit balance before backing off. The same code means out of credit
2. Pass `reasoningDepth: "S"` to research unless you need more. The MCP default is L at $1.50
3. Start with `depth=fast` and `outputType=searchResults`. Deep costs $0.05, ten times as much
4. Send the key as an `Authorization: Bearer` header, not `?apiKey=` or a command-line argument
5. Poll `linkup-get-research` with the task id. Research runs take minutes

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