# Firecrawl MCP vs SerpKite

> Firecrawl MCP scores 75.5 (BB) on agent readiness against SerpKite's 64.8 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Both do web search. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-serpkite
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-serpkite.md (~2,600 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-serpkite.min.md (~680 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-serpkite.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: 2026-10-06

Firecrawl MCP scores 75.5 (BB) on agent readiness against SerpKite's 64.8 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Both do web search.

- Firecrawl MCP: grade BB, 75.5/100, rank #32 of 460. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/firecrawl-mcp.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/firecrawl-mcp.json
- SerpKite: grade B, 64.8/100, rank #179 of 460. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/serpkite.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/serpkite.json

## 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:
- Reliability, 70 against 65
- Security & auth, 67 against 37
- Payments & pricing, 50 against 40
- Maintenance & community, 87 against 80

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- Runs on your own machine
- Open source
- No incidents deducted, where SerpKite loses 3 points for them

Watch for: No x402 or other machine payment

### SerpKite (B)

Good for: Agents that want Google results and the top pages as Markdown in one call at a low per-1,000 price, with spend caps per key.

Also in its favour:
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: Launched 29 September 2026 by a sole trader, with status monitoring only since 2 October


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Firecrawl MCP | SerpKite | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 70 | 65 | Firecrawl MCP +5 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 88 | 90 | SerpKite +2 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 92 | 92 | even |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 67 | 37 | Firecrawl MCP +30 |
| 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 | 80 | Firecrawl MCP +7 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 76 | 77 | SerpKite +1 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| **Total** | | **75.5 · BB** | **64.8 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Firecrawl MCP | SerpKite |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Firecrawl (Mendable) | SerpKite (Anastasia Klimova, trading as SerpKite) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp` | `https://api.serpkite.com/v1/search` |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy) | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | Proprietary service under SerpKite's terms of service. The SDKs (TypeScript, Python, Go, LangChain, Vercel AI SDK) and the MCP connection repository on GitHub are MIT |
| Tools exposed | 26 | 14 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.firecrawl/firecrawl-mcp-server` | `io.github.SerpKite/serpkite` |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-04 |
| Popularity | 7.5k stars, 29k npm/wk | 809 npm/wk, 376 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.

**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.

## 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

### 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

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Firecrawl MCP or SerpKite?

Firecrawl MCP scores 75.5 (BB) on agent readiness against SerpKite's 64.8 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories.

### Do Firecrawl MCP and SerpKite need an API key?

Firecrawl MCP takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. SerpKite needs an API key.

### Can an agent call Firecrawl MCP and SerpKite without installing anything?

Yes. Firecrawl MCP has a hosted endpoint at https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp and SerpKite at https://api.serpkite.com/v1/search.

### Are Firecrawl MCP and SerpKite open source?

Firecrawl MCP is open source (MIT). No open-source release is listed for SerpKite.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-serpkite.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-serpkite.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "firecrawl-mcp", "b": "serpkite"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare firecrawl-mcp serpkite`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/firecrawl-mcp.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/serpkite.json

## Other comparisons with Firecrawl MCP or SerpKite

- [Brave Search API + MCP vs Firecrawl MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-firecrawl-mcp.md)
- [Brave Search API + MCP vs SerpKite](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-serpkite.md)
- [Bright Data vs Firecrawl MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-firecrawl-mcp.md)
- [Cloudflare Web Search API vs Firecrawl MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-web-search-vs-firecrawl-mcp.md)
- [Cloudflare Web Search API vs SerpKite](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-web-search-vs-serpkite.md)
- [Exa API + MCP vs Firecrawl MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/exa-mcp-vs-firecrawl-mcp.md)
- [Exa API + MCP vs SerpKite](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/exa-mcp-vs-serpkite.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 Serper](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-serper.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 SerpKite](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/linkup-vs-serpkite.md)
- [Parallel Search and Task APIs vs SerpKite](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/parallel-search-api-vs-serpkite.md)
- [SearchAPI.io vs SerpKite](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/searchapi-io-vs-serpkite.md)
- [SerpApi vs SerpKite](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/serpapi-vs-serpkite.md)
- [Serper vs SerpKite](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/serper-vs-serpkite.md)
- [SerpKite vs Tavily API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/serpkite-vs-tavily-mcp.md)
- [SerpKite vs Valyu](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/serpkite-vs-valyu.md)
- [SerpKite vs You.com APIs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/serpkite-vs-you-com-api.md)
- [Fetch (MCP reference server) vs SerpKite](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/fetch-reference-server-vs-serpkite.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)