# Firecrawl MCP vs Spider

> Firecrawl MCP has a score of 75.5 (BB) against Spider's 74.3 (BB). Both do web search. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 46 points. Spider accepts x402. Firecrawl MCP doesn't. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-spider-cloud
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-spider-cloud.md (~2,000 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-spider-cloud.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-spider-cloud.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 Spider's 74.3 (BB). Both do web search. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 46 points. Spider accepts x402. Firecrawl MCP doesn't.

- 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
- Spider: grade BB, 74.3/100, rank #49 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/spider-cloud.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/spider-cloud.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Firecrawl MCP for agent ergonomics (+22), security & auth (+25), transparency & trust (+7).

Pick Spider for reliability (+10), payments & pricing (+46).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Firecrawl MCP | Spider | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 70 | 80 | Spider +10 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 88 | 87 | Firecrawl MCP +1 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 92 | 70 | Firecrawl MCP +22 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 67 | 42 | Firecrawl MCP +25 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 50 | 96 | Spider +46 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 87 | 85 | Firecrawl MCP +2 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 76 | 69 | Firecrawl MCP +7 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **75.5 · BB** | **74.3 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Firecrawl MCP | Spider |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Firecrawl (Mendable) | Spider (BAGELMEN LLC) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp` | `https://api.spider.cloud` |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy) | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | yes, from $0.0005/call |
| Licence | MIT | MIT |
| Tools exposed | 26 | 22 |
| 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` | `cloud.spider/mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-07-19 |
| Popularity | 7.5k stars, 29k npm/wk | 2.7k stars, 2.7k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (8) | 3.3/5 (8) |

## Verdicts

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

**Spider.** Keyless /scrape and working x402 v2 on every core route, so an agent needs no account. Operated by BAGELMEN LLC with no address, retention periods or DPA in the privacy policy.

## 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

### Spider

1. Every content route returns a JSON array, even /scrape. The status field is the page's, not the API call's
2. Leave request on smart and set return_format to markdown for LLM input
3. Set limit on /crawl. Unset, it caps only at your credit balance
4. Use /scrape with `stealth: true` instead of /unblocker, which is deprecated
5. Honour Retry-After on 429. Keyless use allows 4 requests a minute

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