# Firecrawl MCP vs Tavily API + MCP

> Tavily API + MCP has a score of 77.2 (BB) against Firecrawl MCP's 75.5 (BB). Both do web search. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 25 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-tavily-mcp
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-tavily-mcp.md (~2,000 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-tavily-mcp.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-tavily-mcp.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

Tavily API + MCP has a score of 77.2 (BB) against Firecrawl MCP's 75.5 (BB). Both do web search. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 25 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
- Tavily API + MCP: grade BB, 77.2/100, rank #20 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/tavily-mcp.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/tavily-mcp.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Firecrawl MCP for agent ergonomics (+11), security & auth (+15), transparency & trust (+11).

Pick Tavily API + MCP for reliability (+20), payments & pricing (+25).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Firecrawl MCP | Tavily API + MCP | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 70 | 90 | Tavily API + MCP +20 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 88 | 89 | Tavily API + MCP +1 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 92 | 81 | Firecrawl MCP +11 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 67 | 52 | Firecrawl MCP +15 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 50 | 75 | Tavily API + MCP +25 |
| 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 | 65 | Firecrawl MCP +11 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **75.5 · BB** | **77.2 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Firecrawl MCP | Tavily API + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | MCP server |
| Vendor | Firecrawl (Mendable) | Tavily |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp` | `https://mcp.tavily.com/mcp/?tavilyApiKey=<key>` |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy) | stdio, Streamable HTTP, HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | payer tooling only |
| Licence | MIT | MIT |
| Tools exposed | 26 | 6 |
| 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` | `io.github.tavily-ai/tavily-mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-09-18 |
| Popularity | 7.5k stars, 29k npm/wk | 2.4k stars, 452k npm/wk, 1.6M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (8) | 3.6/5 (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.

**Tavily API + MCP.** Keyless search and extract, plus a free 1,000 credits a month with no card. x402 covers advanced search only, not extract, map, crawl or research.

## 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

### Tavily API + MCP

1. Try `X-Tavily-Access-Mode: keyless` first for search and extract, then switch to a key or x402 when the limit hits
2. Send the key in `Authorization: Bearer`, not `?tavilyApiKey=` in the MCP URL
3. On 429, wait for `Retry-After`. A 432 or 433 means a spend limit, and retrying won't help
4. Run /map before /crawl to bound the crawl, since crawl is billed as map plus extract
5. Research is async and runs 4 to 250 credits. Create the task, then poll /research/{request_id}

## Other comparisons with Firecrawl MCP or Tavily API + MCP

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