# Firecrawl MCP vs Serper

> Firecrawl MCP has a score of 75.5 (BB) against Serper's 24.3 (F). Both do web search. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 84 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-serper
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-serper.md (~1,900 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-serper.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-serper.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: 2026-10-05

Firecrawl MCP has a score of 75.5 (BB) against Serper's 24.3 (F). Both do web search. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 84 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
- Serper: grade F, 24.3/100, rank #446 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/serper.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/serper.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Firecrawl MCP for reliability (+40), schema & documentation (+82), agent ergonomics (+57), security & auth (+47), payments & pricing (+10), maintenance & community (+84), transparency & trust (+43).

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

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Firecrawl MCP | Serper | 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 | 6 | Firecrawl MCP +82 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 92 | 35 | Firecrawl MCP +57 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 67 | 20 | Firecrawl MCP +47 |
| 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 | 3 | Firecrawl MCP +84 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 76 | 33 | Firecrawl MCP +43 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **75.5 · BB** | **24.3 · F** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Firecrawl MCP | Serper |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Firecrawl (Mendable) | Serper |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp` | `https://google.serper.dev/search` |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy) | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | none |
| Tools exposed | 26 | none |
| 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 | none |
| Popularity | 7.5k stars, 29k npm/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (8) | 2.5/5 (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.

**Serper.** $0.30 to $1.00 per 1,000 queries on prepaid packs, with no subscription. No status page, SLA or incident history.

## 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

### Serper

1. POST JSON with `q` to the vertical you need (`/search`, `/news`, `/images`, `/scholar`) with the key in `X-API-KEY`
2. Set `gl` and `hl`, since Google results vary by country and language
3. Pair it with a fetcher. Serper returns links and snippets, not page text
4. Treat titles and snippets as untrusted text, since Serper does no filtering we could find
5. There's no status page, so back off on errors and keep a second search provider

## Other comparisons with Firecrawl MCP or Serper

- [Brave Search API + MCP vs Firecrawl MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-firecrawl-mcp.md)
- [Brave Search API + MCP vs Serper](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-serper.md)
- [Bright Data vs Firecrawl MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-firecrawl-mcp.md)
- [Exa API + MCP vs Firecrawl MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/exa-mcp-vs-firecrawl-mcp.md)
- [Exa API + MCP vs Serper](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/exa-mcp-vs-serper.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs Jina Reader](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-jina-reader.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs Linkup](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-linkup.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs Olostep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-olostep.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs Parallel Search and Task APIs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-parallel-search-api.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs ScrapeGraphAI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-scrapegraphai.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs Scrapeless](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-scrapeless.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs ScrapingBee](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-scrapingbee.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs Scrapingdog](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-scrapingdog.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs SearchAPI.io](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-searchapi-io.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs SerpApi](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-serpapi.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs Spider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-spider-cloud.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs Tavily API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-tavily-mcp.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs Valyu](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-valyu.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs You.com APIs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-you-com-api.md)
- [Linkup vs Serper](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/linkup-vs-serper.md)
- [Parallel Search and Task APIs vs Serper](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/parallel-search-api-vs-serper.md)
- [SearchAPI.io vs Serper](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/searchapi-io-vs-serper.md)
- [SerpApi vs Serper](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/serpapi-vs-serper.md)
- [Serper vs Tavily API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/serper-vs-tavily-mcp.md)
- [Serper vs Valyu](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/serper-vs-valyu.md)
- [Serper vs You.com APIs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/serper-vs-you-com-api.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs Scrape.do](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-scrape-do.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs Scrapfly](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-scrapfly.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs ScrapingAnt](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-scrapingant.md)
- [Apify MCP Server vs Firecrawl MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apify-mcp-vs-firecrawl-mcp.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs ZenRows](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-zenrows.md)