Firecrawl vs Web Search MCP Server

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	Web Search MCP Server Locally hosted multi-engine web search and page content extraction for local LLMs — no API keys required. Unverified stdio (local) No auth Stale TypeScript
Category	Search & Web	Search & Web
Language	TypeScript	TypeScript
Transport	stdio (local)	stdio (local)
Auth	API key	None
GitHub stars	6.6k	980
Last commit	2 months ago	1 year ago
Verified
Actively maintained
Install	`npx -y firecrawl-mcp`	`npm install && npx playwright install && npm run build`
Repo	Open	Open

Verdict

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

Pick Web Search MCP Server 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 Web Search MCP Server

Install / run

npm install && npx playwright install && npm run build

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

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "web-search-mcp-server": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": [
        "/path/to/extracted/web-search-mcp/dist/index.js"
      ]
    }
  }
}

FAQ

Firecrawl or Web Search MCP Server — which is better?

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

Can I use both Firecrawl and Web Search MCP Server?

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 Web Search MCP Server work with Claude, Cursor and Windsurf?

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

View Firecrawl →View Web Search MCP Server →More comparisons →