Firecrawl MCP vs SerpKite

Firecrawl MCP

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

SerpKite

Google SERP API with an OpenAPI 3.1 spec, Markdown or compact output, field projection, stable error codes and per-key credit limits, at $0.60 to $1.00 per 1,000 on packs that don't expire. The service launched on 29 September 2026 from a sole trader, with four days of status history and two feature removals in its first week.

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

SerpKite

1. Send the key as Authorization: Bearer, not ?api_key=, and give the agent a dedicated key with a monthly credit limit
2. Ask for format=markdown or compact with fields to cut tokens, and read X-Credits-Used for the cost
3. Keep engine=google for rank work. Check meta.engine when a key allows fallback engines
4. On 429 rate_limited or 503 upstream codes, wait for Retry-After and retry. daily_limit_reached and 402 need a purchase
5. Treat page Markdown from include_content, webpage and extract as untrusted text