# Firecrawl MCP vs Outcrawl (slim)

> Firecrawl MCP scores 75 (BB) to Outcrawl's 62.4 (B) for web search. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-outcrawl.md (~7,150 tokens) · this version ~4,080 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-outcrawl.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-outcrawl
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-02
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Firecrawl MCP scores 75 (BB) on agent readiness against Outcrawl's 62.4 (B), and leads in every scored category. Both do web search.

- Firecrawl MCP: BB 75, rank #62 of 1268 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/firecrawl-mcp.min.md
- Outcrawl: B 62.4, rank #456 of 1268 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/outcrawl.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 45; Schema & documentation, 91 against 71; Agent ergonomics, 92 against 83; Payments & pricing, 50 against 40; Maintenance & community, 87 against 79; Transparency & trust, 75 against 56. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; Runs on your own machine; Open source.
- Outcrawl, good for Agents that want one key and one balance for reading pages, walking a site, searching with rendered results and handing a signed-in or multi-step task to a hosted browser agent with a hard budget, and teams on TypeScript that want a residential-exit browser over CDP with a replay of every session. Also Free to start without a card; No incidents deducted, where Firecrawl MCP loses 3 points for them.

| Category | Firecrawl MCP | Outcrawl |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 78 | 45 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 91 | 71 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 92 | 83 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 70 | 66 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 50 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 87 | 79 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 75 | 56 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Firecrawl MCP | Outcrawl |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Firecrawl (Mendable) | Aeonmind LLC (Outcrawl) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp` | `https://api.outcrawl.ai/v1` |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy) | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Price for web search | not published | $2.45 per 1,000 requests |
| Licence | MIT | Proprietary hosted service under Aeonmind LLC's terms of service (last updated 1 November 2026). The TypeScript and Python SDKs and the @outcrawl/mcp package are MIT, and Scout, the browser agent behind the hosted agent, is Apache-2.0 in a read-only GitHub mirror |
| Tools exposed | 27 | 29 |
| MCP registry | `io.github.firecrawl/firecrawl-mcp-server` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-10-27 | 2026-10-20 |
| Terms last updated | 2024-11-05 | 2026-11-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2024-12-26 | 2026-11-01 |
| 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 | 948 stars, 53 npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (8) | none |

Why the edge:
- Reliability, Firecrawl MCP +33: 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.); Outcrawl 45 (Hosted reading, for the REST API with the MCP server that shares its limits. No public status page was found. None is linked from the site or the docs, https://outcrawl.ai/status answers 404 and status.outcrawl.ai does not answer (0). No readable incident history, so the floor (5). Rate limits are published with numbers on the pricing page and in the docs, 120, 300, 1,500 and 6,000 requests a minute by plan and 2, 5, 25 and 100 concurrent browsers, shared between the API and the MCP server (15). Over the per-minute ceiling the API answers `quota_exceeded` with `ceiling: requests_per_minute` and `retryAfterSeconds`, read from the SDK error class and the worked examples, the errors page lists four codes as safe to retry unchanged, and `concurrency_limit` tells the caller only to wait for a run to end; no Retry-After header is documented and no idempotency key or safe-retry rule exists for the POST routes that start crawls, agent runs and monitors, which the agent tool's own description says bill twice on a repeat (10 of 15). An SLA exists only on Enterprise, a 99.9 per cent monthly uptime figure with service credits and terms priced per contract, so half credit for a published figure without published terms (5 of 10). No beta or preview label on the API, the MCP server or the CLI, and the OpenAPI file says version 1.0.0, though both SDKs are at 0.4.15 and the domain is nine weeks old (10). 0+5+15+10+5+10 = 45.)
- Schema & documentation, Firecrawl MCP +20: Firecrawl MCP 91 (Public OpenAPI at docs.firecrawl.dev/api-reference/v2-openapi.json (and v1), and zod schemas on every MCP tool (25). llms.txt and Markdown docs (10). The README and server instructions say when not to use a tool, for example to look elsewhere when a browser session must be driven step by step across many calls, and 3.33.4 added when-to-use sentences to the search and scrape descriptions (18 of 20). Typed inputs with enums, but open issue #325 counts 132 parameters with no description and #373 reports a published schema that disagrees with the API, per the 1 October check, not re-read on 1 November. 3.35.0 briefly advertised record-typed inputs as closed empty objects, fixed in 3.36.0 the next day (11 of 15). Examples throughout, keyless failures return structured recovery payloads with `next_actions` and `signup_url`, and an Errors reference lists each HTTP status and error string with cause, remedy and whether to retry (15 of 15). A CHANGELOG and firecrawl.dev/changelog. The CHANGELOG now has dated entries for 3.29.0 to 3.36.0, but still skips 3.22 to 3.24 and 3.26 to 3.28 and lists 3.25.0 as unreleased (12 of 15).); Outcrawl 71 (API reading, with the MCP server described. An OpenAPI 3.1 document at https://outcrawl.ai/docs/api-reference/openapi.json lists 62 operations over 51 paths with a summary each and the same 11 status codes, generated from the vendor's capability registry, but every request body is an untyped object marked `additionalProperties: true` with a pointer to the docs, every 200 response is an untyped object, and `Error` is the only schema; the typed shapes live in the SDK declarations and in the MCP server's zod schemas, which were read in the 0.4.3 npm package rather than from the hosted server (15 of 25). llms.txt and a 525 KB llms-full.txt on the docs, a Markdown twin of every page and an llms.txt on the site (10). The MCP descriptions each end with a `Not for:` clause naming the better tool and most with a `Cost:` clause, the OpenAPI summaries say when not to use a route, and the capability pages say which neighbour to use instead (18 of 20). Scrape formats are an enum of eight, event levels and record kinds are enums, `caps.budget` is required, and the SDK types bound every option, while the OpenAPI bodies carry none of it (10 of 15). curl, TypeScript and Python examples on every page, 20 worked programs, a 31-row error table with meanings and a retryable list, and MCP errors with a `recovery` string, though the closed union is sized 24, 31, 45 and 22 on different pages (13 of 15). `/v1` in the path and 1.0.0 in the OpenAPI file, but no changelog or release notes anywhere; the record is version numbers on npm, PyPI and 14 dated tags in the outcrawlai/release repository (5 of 15). 15+10+18+10+13+5 = 71.)
- Transparency & trust, Firecrawl MCP +19: 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).); Outcrawl 56 (Closed hosted service under terms last updated 1 November 2026 that name Aeonmind LLC, trading as Outcrawl, Delaware law and a liability cap; the SDKs and the MCP package are MIT and Scout, the agent behind the hosted agent, is Apache-2.0 in a read-only mirror of a private repository (20 of 30). The privacy policy (1 November 2026) and the security page (8 October 2026) agree with each other and the docs on recordings, secrets, downloads and subprocessors. Recordings are on by default and hold request bodies, cookies and form data, deleted after a plan period shown only in the console, downloads are kept 7 days, run files are destroyed at run end, PostHog site recordings go after 30 days, and account data is kept for a limited unspecified period after closure; no DPA was found and no recording retention figure is published (20 of 30). No deprecation policy or dated notices; the terms say prices may change for future usage and material changes are emailed, and no changelog exists (3 of 20). Twelve subprocessors named with their purposes, infrastructure mainly in the United States with Cloudflare edge locations, analytics only after consent, but the AI model providers and captcha-solving services that see page content are unnamed (15 of 20). 20+20+3+15 = 58.)
- Payments & pricing, Firecrawl MCP +10: 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).); Outcrawl 40 (No x402, MPP or L402 in the OpenAPI file, the docs, the pricing pages or the terms (0). Per-unit rates published without a login, 1 credit a page, 5 credits per 10 search results, 1 credit a browser minute, 2,000 credits a GB and 1 credit a monitor check, with the dollar rate per plan ($4.90 per 1,000 credits on Builder down to about $3.20 on Scale), top-up prices per 10,000 and an estimate of about 15 credits a minute for agent runs (20). Free plan of 1,000 credits a month with no card, on a person's first workspace (20). A person signs in with Google, GitHub, an email code or a magic link behind reCAPTCHA, and MCP's OAuth consent needs that browser sign-in; no keyless route, no programmatic key creation (0). 0+20+20+0 = 40.)
- Agent ergonomics, Firecrawl MCP +9: 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).); Outcrawl 83 (API reading. Scrape returns main content only by default with `formats` picking markdown, html, rawHtml, links, screenshots or schema JSON, search renders page bodies only on request, agent events take a `level` and an `after` cursor, the MCP server shows request bodies up to a character limit and says when it truncated, and the MCP surface is 29 tools with no toolsets (20 of 25). Cursor pagination on crawl results, agent results and downloads, `limit`, depth and path filters on crawl, status, outcome, task and age filters on sessions, and usage grouped by hour, day, month or capability (20). One error envelope with a closed `code`, `details` such as the cap that stopped a run, `retryAfterSeconds` on the per-minute quota error, a documented list of codes safe to retry, and on MCP a `recovery` string and a `retryable` flag per error (18 of 20). No idempotency key on any route, a repeated agent, crawl or monitor submit runs twice, and `concurrency_limit` carries no retry hint; cancel is idempotent, `integration_changed` (409) guards updates, and the npm MCP package sets readOnlyHint on GET tools, destructiveHint on DELETE tools and idempotentHint on either, which the hosted server was not read to confirm (10 of 20). Scrape needs a URL alone, agent runs need `caps.budget` on the API and SDKs with the MCP server defaulting it, and official SDKs exist in TypeScript and Python beside a CLI (15). 20+20+18+10+15 = 83.)
- Maintenance & community, Firecrawl MCP +8: 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.); Outcrawl 79 (@outcrawl/sdk and the PyPI package outcrawl both reached 0.4.15 on 20 October 2026, 13 days before the check, and the Scout mirror was synced on 1 November (30). 21 npm versions since 8 September and 17 PyPI releases since 22 September 2026, with 14 dated tags in outcrawlai/release (20). Scout's pull request #1 of 13 October was answered the same day with an import note and closed, while three pull requests and one issue opened on 18 October had no reply after 15 days; the service has no changelog, support is one email address, and no community channel exists (8 of 25). Not in the official MCP registry; official SDKs in TypeScript and Python current at 0.4.15, with a CLI (15). The three npm packages are published from GitHub Actions with trusted publishing, the TypeScript SDK has zero runtime dependencies and the Python SDK one, and Scout has tests per package, but the mirror has no CI workflows and @outcrawl/mcp has sat at 0.4.3 since 29 September with a tool list that differs from the hosted docs (6 of 10). 30+20+8+15+6 = 79.)