Firecrawl MCP server
The Firecrawl MCP server gives AI agents live web access through Firecrawl: search the web, scrape a URL into Markdown or JSON, map and crawl whole sites, and click through pages.
Connect Firecrawl
Claude Code, signing in with your Firecrawl account (finish sign-in with /mcp)
claude mcp add --transport http firecrawl https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp-oauthCodex, signing in with your Firecrawl account
codex mcp add firecrawl --url https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp-oauthCursor or any client with a JSON config, keyless
{"mcpServers": {"firecrawl": {"url": "https://mcp.firecrawl.dev/v2/mcp"}}}Run the open-source server locally with an API key
env FIRECRAWL_API_KEY=fc-YOUR_API_KEY npx -y firecrawl-mcpIn ChatGPT and Claude.ai, Firecrawl points to its native connector in each app's connector directory instead of a URL. With an API key on the hosted endpoint, send it as an Authorization: Bearer header in the client config, never in the URL.
What the Firecrawl MCP server does
The Firecrawl MCP server connects an AI agent to Firecrawl, a web data API. With it the agent can run a web search and get ranked results, scrape a known URL into clean Markdown or into JSON that matches a schema you give it, list every URL on a site without fetching them, and crawl a section of a site within limits you set. It also parses files such as PDFs into text.
Firecrawl's server goes past plain fetching. An interact tool clicks, types and navigates on a page before reading it, an agent tool runs multi-source research and returns structured data when you do not know which sites hold the answer, and monitor tools re-check a page on a schedule and report what changed. A developer search tool looks across GitHub issues, pull requests, READMEs and docs for programming questions.
Firecrawl runs the server for you at mcp.firecrawl.dev, so most people connect a URL instead of installing anything. The same open-source code runs locally with npx over stdio or Streamable HTTP, and it can point at a self-hosted Firecrawl instance. The repo had 7,538 GitHub stars on 2026-10-01.
Tools it gives your agent
firecrawl_scrapefirecrawl_searchfirecrawl_mapfirecrawl_crawlfirecrawl_check_crawl_statusfirecrawl_parsefirecrawl_agentfirecrawl_agent_statusfirecrawl_interactfirecrawl_interact_stopfirecrawl_developer_searchfirecrawl_credit_usage
When to use Firecrawl
- Your agent needs the current text of a web page, not what the model remembers.
- You want product prices, listings or contacts pulled from a site into JSON.
- You need every docs page of a site crawled and fed to the agent as Markdown.
- A page only shows its content after a click or a login step.
- You want to try web scraping in an agent with no account at all, through the keyless endpoint.
When to pick something else
- Heavy use: crawl, map and agent need an API key or sign-in, and every call spends credits from a monthly allowance.
- Driving a browser step by step across a long session: each interact call runs one turn and returns. Playwright or Chrome DevTools fit that job better.
What Firecrawl needs
- A Firecrawl account and API key for the full tool set (keyless covers search, scrape and parse)
- Node.js, only when running the server locally with npx
What the Firecrawl MCP server costs
Free and open source under MIT, with a keyless hosted tier that has daily limits; full use spends Firecrawl credits from a free or paid plan.
Current prices: www.firecrawl.dev . We do not list prices: vendors change them often, so check the publisher's own page.
Questions people ask
Is the Firecrawl MCP server free?
The server code is free under MIT, and the hosted keyless endpoint lets an agent search, scrape and parse without an account, with daily limits. Beyond that you spend Firecrawl credits from the monthly allowance of the Free plan or a paid plan (pricing page, 2026-10-01).
Does the Firecrawl MCP server work with ChatGPT?
Yes. Firecrawl's docs send ChatGPT users to a native Firecrawl connector in ChatGPT, and give setup lines for Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, OpenCode and any client that reads a JSON MCP config.
Can I use it with a self-hosted Firecrawl?
Yes. Run the server locally and set FIRECRAWL_API_URL to your own instance; the API key then becomes optional.
Other MCP servers for web search and scraping
- Apify: The Apify MCP server gives AI agents thousands of ready-made scrapers and automation tools from Apify Store, such as Google Maps, Instagram and search result scrapers, which the agent can find and run on demand.
- Brave Search: The Brave Search MCP server gives AI agents Brave's independent search index: web, news, image, video, local and place search, plus pre-extracted page text for grounding and AI summaries.
- Exa: The Exa MCP server gives AI agents web search and page reading through Exa's search engine, plus optional advanced filters and Exa Agent runs for multi-step research with structured output.
- Jina AI: The Jina AI MCP server gives AI agents Jina's Reader, Search, Embeddings and Reranker APIs: read any web page or PDF as Markdown, search the web, arXiv and SSRN, and rerank results.