Firecrawl vs Ref MCP

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	Ref MCP Token-efficient documentation search and reading for coding agents across public and private docs. Unverified stdio (local) API key TypeScript
Category	Search & Web	Search & Web
Language	TypeScript	TypeScript
Transport	stdio (local)	stdio (local)
Auth	API key	API key
GitHub stars	6.6k	1.1k
Last commit	2 months ago	1 month ago
Verified
Actively maintained
Install	`npx -y firecrawl-mcp`	`npx ref-tools-mcp@latest`
Repo	Open	Open

Verdict

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

Pick Ref MCP if you prefer its approach (token-efficient documentation search and reading for coding agents across public and private docs).

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 Ref MCP

Install / run

npx ref-tools-mcp@latest

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

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ref-mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "ref-tools-mcp@latest"
      ],
      "env": {
        "REF_API_KEY": "<sign up to get an api key>"
      }
    }
  }
}

FAQ

Firecrawl or Ref MCP — which is better?

Pick Firecrawl if you want the official, vendor-maintained server, and you prefer the more popular, battle-tested option. Pick Ref MCP if you prefer its approach (token-efficient documentation search and reading for coding agents across public and private docs).

Can I use both Firecrawl and Ref MCP?

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 Ref MCP work with Claude, Cursor and Windsurf?

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

View Firecrawl →View Ref MCP →More comparisons →