# Firecrawl MCP vs ScrapingAnt

> Firecrawl MCP has a score of 75.5 (BB) against ScrapingAnt's 35.9 (F). Both do fetching pages. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 82 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-scrapingant
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-scrapingant.md (~2,000 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-scrapingant.min.md (~380 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-scrapingant.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 ScrapingAnt's 35.9 (F). Both do fetching pages. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 82 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
- ScrapingAnt: grade F, 35.9/100, rank #440 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/scrapingant.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/scrapingant.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Firecrawl MCP for reliability (+40), schema & documentation (+45), agent ergonomics (+26), security & auth (+57), payments & pricing (+10), maintenance & community (+82), transparency & trust (+19).

Pick ScrapingAnt for nothing in particular (no category where it leads by five points or more).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Firecrawl MCP | ScrapingAnt | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 70 | 30 | Firecrawl MCP +40 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 88 | 43 | Firecrawl MCP +45 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 92 | 66 | Firecrawl MCP +26 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 67 | 10 | Firecrawl MCP +57 |
| 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 | 5 | Firecrawl MCP +82 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 76 | 57 | Firecrawl MCP +19 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **75.5 · BB** | **35.9 · F** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Firecrawl MCP | ScrapingAnt |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Firecrawl (Mendable) | ScrapingAnt (DATAANT) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp` | `https://api.scrapingant.com/v2/general` |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy) | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | none |
| Tools exposed | 26 | 3 |
| 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 | no |
| MCP registry | `io.github.firecrawl/firecrawl-mcp-server` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2024-07-16 |
| Popularity | 7.5k stars, 29k npm/wk | 90 npm/wk, 2k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (8) | 3.5/5 (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.

**ScrapingAnt.** 10,000 free credits a month with no card. API Basics puts the key in the query string, so it lands in logs.

## 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

### ScrapingAnt

1. Send the key in the `x-api-key` header rather than the query string
2. Use `/v2/markdown` for LLM input, and set `browser=false` on static pages to pay 1 credit instead of 10
3. Switch to `proxy_type=residential` only after a 423 (anti-bot) response. It raises a browser request from 10 to 125 credits
4. On the free plan a second concurrent request gets 409. Wait for the first to finish
5. Google, Bing and Yandex result pages come back as raw HTML through `/v2/general`, so you parse them yourself

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