Firecrawl vs SearXNG

A side-by-side comparison of two Search & Web servers — tools, transport, auth, maintenance, and copy-paste config for each.

	Firecrawl Official Firecrawl MCP server — scrape, crawl, map, search, and structured extraction for any LLM client. Verified stdio (local) API key TypeScript	SearXNG Private metasearch via your own SearXNG instance — popular community MCP server for self-hosted search. Verified stdio (local) No auth TypeScript
Category	Search & Web	Search & Web
Language	TypeScript	TypeScript
Transport	stdio (local)	stdio (local)
Auth	API key	None
GitHub stars	6.6k	896
Last commit	1 month ago	1 month ago
Verified
Actively maintained
Install	`npx -y firecrawl-mcp`	`npx -y mcp-searxng`
Repo	Open	Open

Verdict

Pick Firecrawl if you want the official, vendor-maintained server, and you prefer the more popular, battle-tested option.

Pick SearXNG if you want zero-setup with no API key.

Add Firecrawl

Install / run

npx -y firecrawl-mcp

Paste into ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "firecrawl": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "firecrawl-mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "FIRECRAWL_API_KEY": "<your-firecrawl-api-key>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Add SearXNG

Install / run

npx -y mcp-searxng

Paste into ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "searxng": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "mcp-searxng"
      ],
      "env": {
        "SEARXNG_URL": "https://your-searxng-instance.example.com"
      }
    }
  }
}

FAQ

Firecrawl or SearXNG — which is better?

Pick Firecrawl if you want the official, vendor-maintained server, and you prefer the more popular, battle-tested option. Pick SearXNG if you want zero-setup with no API key.

Can I use both Firecrawl and SearXNG?

Yes — MCP clients let you enable multiple servers at once. Add both configs to your client's mcpServers and use whichever tool fits the task.

Do Firecrawl and SearXNG work with Claude, Cursor and Windsurf?

Both do. Copy the per-client config below into Claude Desktop, Cursor, or Windsurf.

View Firecrawl →View SearXNG →More comparisons →