# Firecrawl MCP vs Scrapfly

> Firecrawl MCP has a score of 75.5 (BB) against Scrapfly's 69.8 (B). Both do fetching pages. The largest gap is reliability, 20 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-scrapfly
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-scrapfly.md (~2,000 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-scrapfly.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-scrapfly.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 Scrapfly's 69.8 (B). Both do fetching pages. The largest gap is reliability, 20 points.

- 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
- Scrapfly: grade B, 69.8/100, rank #107 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/scrapfly.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/scrapfly.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Firecrawl MCP for reliability (+20), agent ergonomics (+12), payments & pricing (+10).

Pick Scrapfly for schema & documentation (+7).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Firecrawl MCP | Scrapfly | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 70 | 50 | Firecrawl MCP +20 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 88 | 95 | Scrapfly +7 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 92 | 80 | Firecrawl MCP +12 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 67 | 70 | Scrapfly +3 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 50 | 40 | Firecrawl MCP +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 87 | 84 | Firecrawl MCP +3 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 76 | 77 | Scrapfly +1 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **75.5 · BB** | **69.8 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Firecrawl MCP | Scrapfly |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Firecrawl (Mendable) | Scrapfly (Joam Intelligence, LLC) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp` | `https://api.scrapfly.io/scrape` |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy) | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | none |
| Tools exposed | 26 | 61 |
| 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` | `io.scrapfly.mcp/mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-09-08 |
| Popularity | 7.5k stars, 29k npm/wk | 14 stars, 21k npm/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.

**Scrapfly.** The error catalogue documents HTTP status, retry behaviour and billing for over 100 codes. The MCP server loads 61 tools at once.

## 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

### Scrapfly

1. Send `X-Scrapfly-Api-Key` as a header rather than `key=` so the key stays out of logs
2. Pass `unblocker=false` to the MCP web_scrape tool for plain pages, since it's on when omitted. `asp` is the deprecated alias
3. Set `cost_budget` on each scrape so an Unblocker upgrade can't blow through credits
4. Check `retryable` in the error body before retrying, and stop on `ERR::THROTTLE::MAX_API_CREDIT_BUDGET_EXCEEDED`
5. Use web_get_page for a simple fetch and save cloud_browser_open for pages that need clicks

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