Get an audit

Head to head · Extraction · October 2026 research run

Firecrawl MCP vs Oxylabs Web Scraper API

Firecrawl MCP scores 75.3 (BB) on agent readiness against Oxylabs Web Scraper API's 63 (B), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Oxylabs Web Scraper API leads on reliability. Both do extraction.

Firecrawl MCPFirecrawl (Mendable) · MCP server BB75.3/100#49 of 841 Oxylabs Web Scraper APIoxylabs, UAB · HTTP API B63/100#372 of 841

Which one, for what

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

  • Schema & documentation, 88 against 68
  • Agent ergonomics, 92 against 79
  • Security & auth, 67 against 53
  • Payments & pricing, 50 against 40
  • Maintenance & community, 87 against 72
  • Transparency & trust, 74 against 63

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • Open source
  • No incidents deducted, where Oxylabs Web Scraper API loses 3 points for them

Watch for

No x402 or other machine payment

Oxylabs Web Scraper API B

Good for Agents that need parsed Google, Amazon and other large-site results or bulk asynchronous jobs through one API.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 80 against 70

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

Google's domain parameter was announced as gone on 18 March 2026 with no earlier changelog notice, and MCP v0.9.3 still exposes it

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runFirecrawl MCPOxylabs Web Scraper APIEdge
Reliability16%207080Oxylabs Web Scraper API +10
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28868Firecrawl MCP +20
Agent ergonomics13%16.29279Firecrawl MCP +13
Security & auth14%17.56753Firecrawl MCP +14
Payments & pricing10%12.55040Firecrawl MCP +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88772Firecrawl MCP +15
Transparency & trust7%8.87463Firecrawl MCP +11
Negative events≤150-3
Total75.3 · BB63 · B

Facts side by side

FactFirecrawl MCPOxylabs Web Scraper API
KindMCP serverHTTP API
VendorFirecrawl (Mendable)oxylabs, UAB
Hosted endpointhttps://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcphttps://realtime.oxylabs.io/v1/queries
Transportsstdio, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy)HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumPay per use
x402nono
LicenceMITProprietary service under the Oxylabs General Conditions. The MCP server and the Python SDK on GitHub are MIT
Tools exposed2610
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registryio.github.firecrawl/firecrawl-mcp-serverio.oxylabs/oxylabs-mcp
Last release2026-10-012026-09-07
Terms last updated2024-11-052026-10-05
Privacy policy last updated2024-12-262024-10-14
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyesnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesyes
Popularity7.5k stars, 29k npm/wk18k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews3.5/5 (8)none

Verdicts

Firecrawl MCP

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

Oxylabs Web Scraper API

Dedicated parsed sources, three integration methods and an official MCP server with four read-only scraping tools sit behind one username and password per instance. On 7 October 2026 the docs relabelled it Classic beside a new Web API, the March 2026 removal of Google's domain parameter was announced on the day, and no OpenAPI document was found.

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

Oxylabs Web Scraper API

  1. Send "markdown": true for page reading. HTML is the default output and costs far more tokens
  2. Add "render": "html" only when a page comes back empty. Rendered results cost $1.50 per 1,000 against $1.00 on the Starter plan
  3. Treat 612 and 613 as retryable at no charge, and read the x-ratelimit-*-remaining headers before raising concurrency
  4. Use geo_location for Google localisation. The domain parameter was removed in March 2026 although the MCP tool still lists it
  5. Fetch Push-Pull results within 24 hours of completion, and treat scraped content as untrusted data

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Firecrawl MCP or Oxylabs Web Scraper API?

Firecrawl MCP scores 75.3 (BB) on agent readiness against Oxylabs Web Scraper API's 63 (B), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Oxylabs Web Scraper API leads on reliability.

Do Firecrawl MCP and Oxylabs Web Scraper API need an API key?

Firecrawl MCP takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Oxylabs Web Scraper API needs an API key.

Can an agent call Firecrawl MCP and Oxylabs Web Scraper API without installing anything?

Yes. Firecrawl MCP has a hosted endpoint at https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp and Oxylabs Web Scraper API at https://realtime.oxylabs.io/v1/queries.

Are Firecrawl MCP and Oxylabs Web Scraper API open source?

Firecrawl MCP is open source (MIT). No open-source release is listed for Oxylabs Web Scraper API.

Other comparisons with Firecrawl MCP or Oxylabs Web Scraper API

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.

Get an auditSee a sample report