Firecrawl vs Fetch (Reference)

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	Fetch (Reference) Official MCP reference server that fetches a URL and returns its content as clean Markdown, with chunking. Verified stdio (local) No auth Python
Category	Search & Web	Search & Web
Language	TypeScript	Python
Transport	stdio (local)	stdio (local)
Auth	API key	None
GitHub stars	6.6k	87k
Last commit	8 days ago	10 days ago
Verified
Actively maintained
Install	`npx -y firecrawl-mcp`	`uvx mcp-server-fetch`
Repo	Open	Open

Verdict

Pick Firecrawl if you need the broadest set of tools.

Pick Fetch (Reference) if you prefer the more popular, battle-tested option, and 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 Fetch (Reference)

Install / run

uvx mcp-server-fetch

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

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "fetch-reference": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-server-fetch"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Requires `uv` (the Python package runner). Install it from https://docs.astral.sh/uv/ if `uvx` is not found.

FAQ

Firecrawl or Fetch (Reference) — which is better?

Pick Firecrawl if you need the broadest set of tools. Pick Fetch (Reference) if you prefer the more popular, battle-tested option, and you want zero-setup with no API key.

Can I use both Firecrawl and Fetch (Reference)?

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 Fetch (Reference) work with Claude, Cursor and Windsurf?

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

View Firecrawl →View Fetch (Reference) →More comparisons →