# Firecrawl MCP vs Valyu

> Firecrawl MCP has a score of 75.5 (BB) against Valyu's 64.6 (B). Both do web search. The largest gap is security & auth, 23 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-valyu
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-valyu.md (~1,950 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-valyu.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-valyu.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 Valyu's 64.6 (B). Both do web search. The largest gap is security & auth, 23 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
- Valyu: grade B, 64.6/100, rank #179 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/valyu.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/valyu.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Firecrawl MCP for reliability (+17), agent ergonomics (+14), security & auth (+23), payments & pricing (+5), maintenance & community (+7).

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

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Firecrawl MCP | Valyu | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 70 | 53 | Firecrawl MCP +17 |
| 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 | 78 | Firecrawl MCP +14 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 67 | 44 | Firecrawl MCP +23 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 50 | 45 | Firecrawl MCP +5 |
| 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 | 79 | Valyu +3 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **75.5 · BB** | **64.6 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Firecrawl MCP | Valyu |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Firecrawl (Mendable) | Valyu |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp` | `https://api.valyu.ai/v1/search` |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy) | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | none |
| 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` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-09-12 |
| Popularity | 7.5k stars, 29k npm/wk | 19 stars, 6.7k npm/wk, 7.1k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (8) | 4.5/5 (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.

**Valyu.** Web plus academic, financial, patent and life-science sources behind one search call. No published rate limits and no Retry-After or backoff guidance.

## 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

### Valyu

1. Set `max_price` and `max_num_results` on every search to bound cost
2. Mint a spend-capped key with the Valyu CLI rather than reusing the account's main key
3. Call `valyu_search`. The legacy per-vertical MCP tools stop working on 2026-12-01
4. A 206 means some sources failed. Check which before treating results as complete
5. DeepResearch is async. Poll `valyu_deepresearch_status` rather than waiting in one call

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