# Firecrawl MCP vs Microlink (slim)

> Firecrawl MCP scores 75 (BB) to Microlink's 65.9 (B) for fetching pages. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-microlink.md (~5,500 tokens) · this version ~2,180 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-microlink.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-microlink
- 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 Microlink's 65.9 (B), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do fetching pages.

- Firecrawl MCP: BB 75, rank #72 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/firecrawl-mcp.min.md
- Microlink: B 65.9, rank #395 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/microlink.min.md
- 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 52; Agent ergonomics, 92 against 82; Security & auth, 70 against 44. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; Open source.
- Microlink, good for Agents that need link previews, screenshots, PDFs, metadata or a page as Markdown from one GET. Also Free to start without a card; No incidents deducted, where Firecrawl MCP loses 3 points for them.

| Category | Firecrawl MCP | Microlink |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 78 | 52 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 91 | 89 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 92 | 82 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 70 | 44 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 50 | 47 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 87 | 86 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 75 | 75 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Firecrawl MCP | Microlink |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Firecrawl (Mendable) | Microlink Labs, S.L. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp` | `https://mcp.microlink.io/mcp` |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy) | stdio, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Licence | MIT | none |
| Tools exposed | 27 | 24 |
| MCP registry | `io.github.firecrawl/firecrawl-mcp-server` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-10-27 | 2026-10-31 |
| Terms last updated | 2024-11-05 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2024-12-26 | no date given |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 7.5k stars, 29k npm/wk | 805 npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (8) | none |

Why the edge:
- Reliability, Firecrawl MCP +26: 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.); Microlink 52 (Graded on the hosted lines. microlink.io/status exists but is drawn by script, showing only 'Please wait' to our reader, and status.microlink.io failed through our proxy, so components and history are unchecked and scored absent (0). No readable history (5). Free and keyed quotas are published, 5 and 25 requests a day and 2 at a time, with paid quotas from 46,000 a month and x-rate-limit headers on every response (15). 429 with ECONCURRENCY says to wait a second and retry, a quota 429 gives the reset time, and every call only reads, but there is no Retry-After header documented (12 of 15). The terms commit to 99.9% uptime on paid plans, with service credits only under an Enterprise agreement (10). Generally available (10). 0 + 5 + 15 + 12 + 10 + 10 = 52.)
- Security & auth, Firecrawl MCP +26: 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).); Microlink 44 (One API key per account in the `x-api-key` header, with no scopes, rotation or expiry documented. auth.md says to keep it out of URLs and no query option is documented (20 of 30). Tools are reads apart from microlink_function, which runs caller-supplied code against the page in Microlink's browser, and the checkout tools never return a key (10 of 20). Pages come back as Markdown and text, and no prompt-injection guidance was found in the docs, auth.md or the MCP README (0). A request id on every response, with no per-call log for the customer documented (4 of 15). security.txt is valid to 28 July 2027 and links a responsible-disclosure policy and acknowledgements. No bug bounty or certification found (10 of 20). 20 + 10 + 0 + 4 + 10 = 44.)
- Agent ergonomics, Firecrawl MCP +10: 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).); Microlink 82 (24 MCP tools in @microlink/mcp 2.8.17 with no toolset filter found (15 of 25). `filter` selects fields, `embed` returns one field as the body, and Markdown and text tools return only page content (18 of 20). Error codes such as EAUTH, ERATE, ECONCURRENCY, EPRO and EPROXYNEEDED with documented fixes (19 of 20). Every tool but microlink_function sets readOnlyHint true and destructiveHint false, and calls are reads with a cache and `force` to refresh. No idempotentHint (18 of 20). Only `url` is required; official JavaScript SDK (@microlink/mql) and CLI, with examples in seven languages but no other official SDK found (12 of 15). 15 + 18 + 19 + 18 + 12 = 82.)